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THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 




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THE LAUNCHING 
OF A UNIVERSITY 

AND OTHER PAPERS 

A SHEAF OF REMEMBRANCES 



BY 
DANIEL COIT GILMAN, LL.D. 

PRESIDENT EMERITUS 
OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 




£ 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 

1906 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two Cooies Received 

FEB 28 1906 

>y Cow right Entry 
CLASS 2t'XXc. No. 
' COPY 3. 



Copyright, 1906, 

BY 
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 



Published January iqo6 






In grateful recognition of the encour- 
agement of JAMES B. ANGELL, 
CHARLES W. ELIOT and ANDREW 
D. WHITE, and of the long continued 
cooperation of BASIL L. GILDER- 
SLEEVE and IRA REMSEN. 



PREFACE 



It has been my good fortune to be often invited, in different parts 
of the country, to deliver addresses on important occasions, most 
of them historical and educational. Those which have been 
printed in pamphlet form are now lost to sight almost as complete- 
ly as those which rest in manuscript destined to the fire. Conse- 
quently the following pages have been brought together in the hope 
that by their perusal some of my colleagues and friends, and espe- 
cially those whom I have known as students, will find that pleasant 
reminiscences are awakened. 

The first three articles were contributed to Scribner*s Magazine 
and are included in this volume by the kind permission of the pub- 
lishers, Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, and the editor, Mr. E. L. 
Burlingame ; and one of the articles printed in the Century Mag- 
azine is likewise reprinted by the kind permission of the publishers. 
I have not hesitated, now and then, to enlarge these papers, and I 
have added some articles hitherto unpublished. 

Nothing is here included which appeared in an earlier volume, 
entitled University Problems. 

Baltimore, December, igoj. 



CONTENTS 



THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 

I Reminiscences of Thirty Years in Baltimore 

(1875-1905) 

II Johns Hopkins and the Trustees of His Choice 

III Fundamental Principles 

IV The Original Faculty 
V Some Noteworthy Teachers 

VI Incidents of the Early Years 

VII Publications 

VIII The Johns Hopkins Medical School . 

IX Resignation; After Twenty-five Years' Service 



3 

27 
41 

47 

59 

89 

115 

121 

127 



ADDRESSES ON VARIOUS OCCASIONS, 
HISTORICAL AND EDUCATIONAL 

X Remembrances; Looking Backwards Over Fifty 

Years 145 « 

XI The Relations of Yale to Science and Letters 

(1701-1901) 161 

XII Books and Politics 195 

XIII California Revisited 223 

XIV Research — a Speech at Chicago 237- 

XV The Dawn of a University in the Western Reserve 255 

XVI Hand-Craft and Rede-Craft 281 

XVII DeJuventute 297 u 

XVIII Greek Art in a Manufacturing Town 319 

XIX A Study in Black and White 329 

XX Civil Service Reform 341 

XXI Education in Philanthropy ... 359 

XXII Colonel John Eager Howard — One of the Wor- 
thies of Baltimore 363 



REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS 
IN BALTIMORE— 1875-1905 



The Launching of a University 



REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 
I875-I905 

During the last half century American universities have 
grown up with surprising rapidity. It is not necessary to fix 
an exact date for the beginning of this progress. Some 
would like to say that the foundation of the Lawrence Sci- 
entific School in Harvard University, and, almost simulta- 
neously, the foundation of the Sheffield School of Science in 
New Haven were initial undertakings. These events indi- 
cated that the two oldest colleges of New England were 
ready to introduce instruction of an advanced character, far 
more special than ever before, in the various branches of nat- 
ural and physical science. An impulse was given by the pas- 
sage of the Morrill Act, by which a large amount of scrip, 
representing public lands, was offered to any State that would 
maintain a college devoted to agriculture and the mechanic 
arts, without the exclusion of other scientific and literary 
studies. The foundation of Cornell University was of the 
highest significance, for it fortunately came under the guid- 
ance of one who was equally devoted to historical and sci- 
entific research, one whose plans showed an independence of 
thought and a power of organisation then without precedent 
in the field of higher education. The changes introduced 
in Harvard, under masterful leadership, when the modern 
era of progress began, had profound influence. The subse- 



4 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

quent gifts of Johns Hopkins, of Rockefeller, of Stanford, 
of Tulane, promoted the establishment of new institutions, 
in sympathy with the older colleges, yet freer to introduce 
new subjects and new methods. The State universities of 
the Northwest and of the Pacific coast, as population and 
wealth increased, became an important factor. These mul- 
tiform agencies must all be carefully considered when an 
estimate is made up of the progress of the last half- 
century. 

I was a close observer of the changes which were intro- 
duced at Yale in the fifties and sixties, the grafting of a new 
branch — " a wild olive," as it seemed — upon the old stock. 
Then I had some experience, brief but significant, in Cali- 
fornia, as the head of the State University, at a time when it 
was needful to answer the popular cry that it should become 
chiefly a school of agriculture, and when it was important to 
show the distinction between a university and a polytechnic 
institute. Then came a call to the East and a service of 
more than a quarter of a century in the organisation and de- 
velopment of a new establishment. These are three typical 
institutions. Yale was a colonial foundation, wedded to 
precedents, where an effort was made to introduce new 
studies and new methods. California was a State institution, 
benefited by the so-called agricultural grant, where it was 
necessary to emphasise the importance of the liberal arts, in a 
community where the practical arts were sure to take care 
of themselves. Baltimore afforded an opportunity to develop 
a private endowment free from ecclesiastical or political con- 
trol, where from the beginning the old and the new, the 
humanities and the sciences, theory and practice, could be 
generously promoted. 

In looking over this period, remarkable changes are mani- 
fest. In the first place, science receives an amount of support 
unknown before. This is a natural consequence of the won- 
derful discoveries which have been made in respect to the 



RECENT GROWTH OF UNIVERSITIES 5 

phenomena and laws of nature and the improvements made 
in scientific instruments and researches. Educational leaders 
perceived the importance of the work carried on in labora- 
tories and observatories under the impulse of such men as 
Liebig and Faraday. With this increased attention to 
science, the old-fashioned curriculum disappeared, of necessity, 
and many combinations of studies were permitted in the 
most conservative institutions. Absolute freedom of choice 
is now allowed in many places. Historical and political 
science has come to the front, and it is no longer enough to 
learn from a text-book wearisome lists of names and dates; 
reference must be made to original sources of information, 
or, at any rate, many books must be consulted in order to 
understand the progress of human society. Some knowledge 
of German and French is required of everyone. English 
literature receives an amount of attention never given to it 
in early days. Medicine is no longer taught by lectures only, 
but the better schools require continued practice in biological 
laboratories and the subsequent observation of patients in 
hospitals and dispensaries. The admission of women to the 
advantages of higher education is also one of the most note- 
worthy advances of the period we are considering. 

The historian who takes up these and allied indications of 
the progress of American universities will have a difficult 
and an inspiring theme. It has been a delightful and ex- 
hilarating time in which to live and to work, to observe and 
to try. All the obstacles have not been overcome, some 
mistakes have been made, much remains for improvement, 
but on the whole the record of the last forty or fifty years 
exhibits substantial and satisfactory gains. The efforts of 
scholars have been sustained by the munificence of donors, 
and more than one institution now has an endowment larger 
than that of all the institutions which were in existence in 
1850. 

In the middle of the century the word " university " was 



6 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

in the air. It was cautiously used in Cambridge and New 
Haven, where a number of professional schools were living 
vigorous lives near the parental domicile, then called " the 
college proper," as if the junior departments were colleges 
improper. To speak of " our university " savoured of pre- 
tence in these old colleges. A story was told at Yale that a 
dignitary from a distant State introduced himself as chan- 
cellor of the university. " How large a faculty have you? " 
asked Dominie Day. " Not any," was the answer. " Have 
you any library or buildings? " " Not yet," replied the vis- 
itor. " Any endowment? " " None," came the monotonous 
and saddening negative. " What have you?" persisted the 
Yale president. The visitor brightened as he said, " We 
have a very good charter." 

Among enlightened and well-read people, the proper sig- 
nificance of a university was of course understood. Students 
came home from Europe, and especially from Germany, with 
clear conceptions of its scope. Everett, Bancroft, Ticknor, 
Hedge, Woolsey, Thacher, Whitney, Child, Gould, Lane, 
Gildersleeve and others were familiar with the courses of 
illustrious teachers on the Continent. European scholars 
were added to the American faculties — Follen, Beck, Lieber, 
Agassiz, Guyot, and others also distinguished. But the 
American colleges had been based on the idea of an English 
college, and upon this central nucleus the limited funds and 
the unlimited energies of the times were concentrated, not 
indeed exclusively, but diligently. Any diversion of the con- 
centrated resources of the treasury to " outside " interests, 
like law, medicine, and theology, was not to be thought of. 
Even now, one hears occasionally the question, " After all, 
what is the difference between a university and a college? " 
To certain persons, the university simply means the best 
place of instruction that the locality can secure. The coun- 
try is full of praiseworthy foundations which ought to be 
known as high-schools or academies or possibly as colleges, 



MISUSE OF WORD UNIVERSITY 7 

but which appear to great disadvantage under the more pre- 
tentious name they have assumed. Just after the war the 
enthusiastic sympathy of the North for the enfranchised 
blacks led to the bestowal of the highest term in educational 
nomenclature upon the institutes where the freedmen were 
to be taught. Fortunately, Hampton and Tuskegee escaped 
this christening, but Fiske, Atlanta, and Howard founda- 
tions were thus named. It is nearer the truth to say that 
the complete university includes four faculties — the liberal 
arts or philosophy, law, medicine, and theology. Sometimes 
a university is regarded as the union, under one board of 
control, of all the highest institutions of a place or region. 
There is one instance, — the State of New York, — where the 
name " university " is given to a board which in a general 
way supervises all the degree-giving institutions in the 
State. 

■When the announcement was made to the public, at the 
end of 1873, that a wealthy merchant of Baltimore had pro- 
vided by his will for the establishment of a new university, a 
good deal of latent regret was felt because the country seemed 
to have already more higher seminaries than it could supply 
with teachers, students, or funds. Another " college " was 
expected to join the crowded column, and impoverish its 
neighbours by its superior attractions. Fortunately, the 
founder was wise as well as generous. He used the sim- 
plest phrases to express his wishes; and he did not define the 
distinguished name that he bestowed upon his child, nor 
embarrass its future by needless conditions. Details were 
left to a sagacious body of trustees whom he charged with 
the duty of supervision. They travelled east and west, 
brought to Baltimore experienced advisers, Eliot, Angell, 
and White, and procured many of the latest books that dis- 
cussed the problem of education. By and by they chose a 
president, and accepted his suggestion that they should give 
emphasis to the word " university " and should endeavour 



8 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

to build up an institution quite different from a " college," 
thus making an addition to American education, not intro- 
ducing a rival. Young men who had already gone through 
that period of mental discipline which commonly leads to 
the baccalaureate degree were invited to come and pursue 
those advanced studies for which they might have been pre- 
pared, and to accept 'the inspiration and guidance of profes- 
sors selected because of acknowledged distinction or of spe- 
cial aptitudes. Among the phrases that were employed to 
indicate the project were many which then were novel, al- 
though they are now the commonplaces of catalogues and 
speeches. 

Opportunities for advanced, not professional, studies were 
then scanty in this country. In the older colleges certain 
graduate courses were attended by a small number of fol- 
lowers — but the teachers were for the most part absorbed 
with undergraduate instruction, and could give but little 
time to the few who sought their guidance. Probably my 
experience was not unusual. After taking the degree of 
Bachelor of Arts in Yale College, I was undecided what 
profession to follow. The effect of the collegiate discipline, 
which " introduced " me, according to the phrase of the day, 
to not less than twenty subjects in the senior year, was to 
arouse an interest of about equal intensity in as many 
branches of knowledge. I remained a year at New Haven 
as a resident graduate. President Woolsey, whom I con- 
sulted, asked me to read Rau's political economy and come 
and tell him its contents; I did not accept the challenge. I 
asked Professor Hadley if I might read Greek with him; 
he declined my proposal. Professor Porter did give me some 
guidance in reading, especially in German. I had many 
talks of an inspiring nature with Professor Dana — but, on 
the whole, I think that the year was wasted. The next 
autumn I went to Cambridge and called upon President 
Sparks, to learn what opportunities were there open. " You 



IDEA OF THE UNIVERSITY 9 

can hear Professor Agassiz lecture," he said, " if you want 
to; and I believe Mr. Longfellow is reading Dante with a 
class." I did not find at Cambridge any better opportunities 
than I had found at New Haven — but in both places I 
learned to admire the great teachers, and to wish that there 
were better arrangements for enabling a graduate student 
to ascertain what could be enjoyed and to profit by the 
opportunities. 

As the day has now come when there is almost a super- 
fluity of advanced courses, let me tell some of the conditions 
which brought the Johns Hopkins foundations into close 
relations with these upward and onward movements. 

Before a university can be launched there are six requi- 
sites: An idea; capital, to make the ideal feasible; a defi- 
nite plan; an able staff of coadjutors; books and appara- 
tus; students. On each of these points I shall briefly 
dwell, conscious of one advantage as a writer — conscious, 
also, of a disadvantage. I have the advantage of knowing 
more than anyone else of an unwritten chapter of history; 
the disadvantage of not being able or disposed to tell the 
half that I remember. 

" The idea of the university " was a phrase to which 
Cardinal Newman had given currency in a remarkable 
series of letters in which he advocated the establishment 
of a Catholic foundation in Dublin. At a time when eccle- 
siastical or denominational colleges were at the front, and 
were considered by many people the only defensible places 
for the education of young men, his utterances for academic 
freedom were emancipating; at a time when early spe- 
cialisation was advocated, his defence of liberal culture was 
reassuring. The evidence elicited by the British university 
commissions was instructive, and the writings of Mark 
Pattison, Dr. Appleton, Matthew Arnold, and others were 
full of suggestions. Innumerable essays and pamphlets had 
appeared in Germany discussing the improvements which 



io THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

were called for in that land of research. The endeavours 
of the new men at Cambridge and New Haven, and the 
instructive success of the University of Virginia, were all 
brought under consideration. Under these favourable cir- 
cumstances, Zeit-geist they may be called, the Johns Hop- 
kins was founded upon the idea of a university as distinct 
from a college. 

The capital was provided by a single individual. No 
public meeting was ever held to promote subscriptions or 
to advocate higher education; no speculation in land was 
proposed; no financial gains were expected; no religious 
body was involved, not even the Society of orthodox 
Friends, in which the founder had been trained, and from 
which he selected several of his confidential advisers. He 
gave what seemed at the time a princely gift; he supple- 
mented it with an equal gift for a hospital. It was natural 
that he should also give his name. That was then the 
fashion. John Harvard and Elihu Yale had lived long ago, 
and they never sought the remembrance which their con- 
temporaries insured; but in late years Girard, Smithson, 
Lawrence, Cornell, and Cooper, had all regarded their 
foundations as children entitled to bear the parental name. 
Their follower in Maryland did likewise. 

It is always interesting to know the genesis of great gifts. 
Johns Hopkins, who had never married, was in doubt, 
when he grew old, respecting the bestowal of his acquisi- 
tions. The story is current that a sagacious friend said 
to him, " There are two things which are sure to live — a 
university, for there will always be the youth to train; 
and a hospital, for there will always be the suffering to 
relieve." This germ, implanted in a large brain, soon bore 
fruit. 

There is another story which is worth repeating, for it 
shows the relation of one benefaction to another. When 
George Peabody, near the end of his life, came to Balti- 



INFLUENCE OF GEORGE PEABODY n 

more, the place of his former residence, he was invited to 
dine by Mr. John W. Garrett, and Mr. Hopkins was in- 
vited to meet him. It is my impression that they were 
alone at the table. The substance of Mr. Peabody's re- 
marks has thus been given by the host: 

" Mr. Hopkins," said the famous London banker, 
1 we both commenced our commercial life in Baltimore, 
and we knew each other well. I left Baltimore for Lon- 
don, and from the commencement of my busy life I must 
state that I was extremely fond of money, and very happy 
in acquiring it. I laboured, struggled, and economised con- 
tinuously and increased my store, and I have been very 
proud of my achievements. Leaving Baltimore, after a 
successful career in a relatively limited sphere, I began in 
London, the seat of the greatest intellectual forces connected 
with commerce, and there I succeeded wonderfully, and, 
in competition with houses that had been wealthy, pros- 
perous, and famous for generations, I carved my way to 
opulence. It is due to you, Mr. Hopkins, to say, remem- 
bering you so well, that you are the only man I have met 
in all my experience more thoroughly anxious to make 
money and more determined to succeed than myself; and 
you have enjoyed the pleasure of success, too. In vigorous 
efforts for mercantile power, capital, of course, and large 
capital, was vital. I had the satisfaction, as you have had, 
of feeling that success is the test of merit, and I was happy 
in the view that I was in this sense, at least, very mer- 
itorious. You also have enjoyed a great share of success 
and of commercial power and honour. But, Mr. Hopkins, 
though my progress was for a long period satisfactory and 
gratifying, yet, when age came upon me, and when aches 
and pains made me realise that I was not immortal, I felt, 
after taking care of my relatives, great anxiety to place the 
millions that I had accumulated so as to accomplish the 
greatest good for humanity. I looked about me and formed 



12 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

the conclusion that there were men who were just as anx- 
ious to work with integrity and faithfulness, for the com- 
fort, consolation, and advancement of the suffering and 
the struggling poor, as I had been to gather fortune. After 
careful consideration, I called a number of my friends in 
whom I had confidence to meet me, and I proposed that 
they should act as my trustees, and I organised my first 
scheme of benevolence. The trust was accepted, and I 
then for the first time felt there was a higher pleasure and 
a greater happiness than accumulating money, and that 
was derived from giving it for good and humane purposes; 
and so, sir, I have gone on, and from that day realised, 
with increasing enjoyment, the pleasure of arranging for 
the greatest practicable good for those who would need 
my means to aid their well-being, progress, and happiness." 

Given the idea and the funds, the next requisite was a 
plan. In my first interviews with the trustees, I was 
strongly impressed by their desire to do the very best that 
was possible under the circumstances in which they were 
placed. We quickly reached concurrence. Without dis- 
sent, it was agreed that we were to develop, if possible, 
something more than a local institution, and were at least 
to aim at national influence; that we should try to supple- 
ment, and not supplant, existing colleges, and should en- 
deavour to bring to Baltimore, as teachers and as students, 
the ablest minds that we could attract. It was understood 
that we should postpone all questions of building, dormi- 
tories, commons, discipline, and degrees; that we should 
hire or buy in the heart of the city a temporary perch, and 
remain on it until we could determine what wants should 
be revealed, and until we could decide upon future build- 
ings. We were to await the choice of a faculty before we 
matured any schemes of examination, instruction, and 
graduation. 

I was encouraged to travel freely at home and abroad. 



EUROPEAN FRIENDS 13 

Among many men of distinction whom I met on these jour- 
neys, I shall in passing mention several. In Oxford, Cam- 
bridge, Glasgow, Dublin, and Manchester much interest 
was shown in our new undertaking. A confidential talk 
with Dr. Jowett, the head of Balliol College, comes often 
to mind. I remember vividly and with special pleasure 
my visit to Lord Kelvin in his laboratory in the Univer- 
sity of Glasgow, and a dinner with the X Club in London, 
to which Professor Tyndall invited me, and where I met 
Spencer, Hooker, Huxley, Frankland, and other leaders of 
science. The story of this club is given in Huxley's mem- 
oirs. To many leaders in the profession of medicine I was 
introduced by Dr. John S. Billings. On the Continent I 
visited Paris, Berlin, Heidelberg, Strasburg, Freiburg, Leip- 
sic, Munich, and Vienna. In all these places the labora- 
tories were new and were even more impressive than the 
libraries. Everywhere the problems of higher education were 
under discussion; everywhere, readiness to be helpful and 
suggestive was apparent. One Sunday afternoon I sat 
for a long while on the vine-clad hill of Freiburg, looking 
at the beautiful spire of the cathedral and talking with the 
historian, Professor Von Hoist — already well acquainted 
with American conditions. He became one of our lecturers, 
and afterward took part in the development of the Univer- 
sity of Chicago. He gave me an inside view of the work- 
ings of the German University system. Professor James 
Bryce was a most serviceable interpreter of the intricacies 
of Oxford and Cambridge. Through a college classmate 
who had become an agrege in the University of France, I 
had a similar introduction to the methods of the French. 
Among my note-books I think there is one in which, while 
at Oxford, in the autumn of 1875, I drew up an outline 
of the possible organisation of our work in Baltimore. It 
was brief, but it was also comprehensive. 

The first real difficulty was the selection of a faculty. 



14 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

Of this I shall speak in some subsequent pages. Here it 
is enough to say that the announcement was boldly made 
that the best men who could be found would be first ap- 
pointed without respect to the place from which they came, 
the college wherein they were trained, or the religious body 
to which they belonged. The effort would be made to 
secure the best men who were free to accept positions in 
a new, uncertain, and, it must be acknowledged, somewhat 
risky organisation. I will not recall the overtures made to 
men of mark, nor the overtures received from men of no 
mark. Nor can I say whether it was harder to eliminate 
from the list of candidates the second best, or to secure the 
best. 

All this it is well to forget. When I die, the mem- 
ory of those anxieties and perplexities will forever disap- 
pear. It is enough to remember that Sylvester, Gilder- 
sleeve, Remsen, Rowland, Morris, and Martin were the 
first professors. As a faculty " we were seven." Our edu- 
cation, our antecedents, our peculiarities were very differ- 
ent, but we were full of enthusiasm, and we got on together 
without a discordant note. Four of the six are dead; one 
is still as vigorous and incisive as ever; one is now Presi- 
dent. An able corps of associates, lecturers, and fellows 
was appointed with the professors, and they were admirable 
helpers in the inception of the work. 

The recent death of Professor Rowland has brought his 
name before the public, and I have often been asked how at 
the age of twenty-eight he was selected for the important 
chair of physics. The facts are these. 

While on service as a member of the Board of Visitors 
at West Point in the summer of 1875, I became well ac- 
quainted with General Michie, then professor of physics 
in the United States Military Academy. I asked him who 
there was that could be considered for our chair of physics. 
He told me that there was a young man in Troy, of whom 



PROFESSOR ROWLAND 15 

probably I had not heard, whom he had met at the house 
of Professor Forsyth and who seemed to him full of promise. 

"What has he done?" I said. 

" He has lately published an article in the Philosophical 
Magazine'* was his reply, " which shows great ability. If 
you want a young man you had better talk with him." 

" Why did he publish it in London," said I, " and not 
in the American Journal?" 

" Because it was turned down by the American editors," 
he said, " and the writer at once forwarded it to Professor 
Clerk Maxwell, who sent it to the English periodical." 

This at once arrested my attention and we telegraphed 
to Mr. Rowland to come from Troy, where he was an as- 
sistant instructor in the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. 
He came at once and we walked up and down Kosciusko's 
Garden, talking over his plans and ours. He told me in 
detail of his correspondence with Maxwell, and I think he 
showed me the letters received from him. At any rate, it 
was obvious that I was in confidential relations with a young 
man of rare intellectual powers and of uncommon apti- 
tude for experimental science. When I reported the facts 
to the trustees in Baltimore they said at once, " Engage 
that young man and take him with you to Europe, where 
he may follow the leaders in his science and be ready for a 
professorship." And this was done. His subsequent career 
is well known. 

The purchase of books and apparatus is of but little in- 
terest to the public, so I pass that subject by, and will pro- 
ceed at once to the sixth requisite. After plans had been 
formed and teachers installed, the question was still open, 
Where are the students? We were very fortunate in those 
that came to us. They were not many at first, and it was 
comparatively easy to become acquainted with every one. 
Among the pleasantest recollections of* my life are the rela- 
tions which I have held with the young men among whom 



i6 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

my lot has been cast. In later years the numbers have been 
large, the helpers many, so that I have not been quite as 
fortunate, but for a long while I was brought into close 
acquaintance with every student. This half-official, half- 
fraternal intercourse has ripened into life-long friendships. 
In Baltimore, I have always regarded the original body of 
fellows as the advance-guard, carefully chosen, well taught, 
and quickly promoted. Without exception these twenty 
men soon won distinction. Most of them are happily liv- 
ing — so I will not dwell upon their merits; but of two 
Associates who have lately passed away I will say a few 
words. 

Professor Adams came to us at the very opening of the 
university, fresh from his studies under Bluntschli in Heidel- 
berg. He quickly showed the rare qualities which were mani- 
fest through his life — enthusiasm, application, versatility, 
and a generous appreciation of others. His mind was sug- 
gestive, capable of forming wise plans, and quick in devis- 
ing the methods by which those plans could be carried out. 
A remarkable trait was the power of perceiving the adapta- 
tion of his scholars to such posts as were open. He could 
almost always suggest the right man for a given vacancy ; and 
he was just as ready to deter one that he thought unsuitable 
from seeking a place beyond his powers. 

He began at an early day what was not exactly an asso- 
ciation nor a seminary, but a weekly reunion of the teach- 
ers and scholars in the department of historical and polit- 
ical science. These meetings were stimulating to all who 
took part in them, and while the leadership fell upon Dr. 
Adams, many men of distinction came to the gatherings 
and did their part in making them of interest. He also 
initiated that remarkable series of publications, which con- 
tinued under his editorship until his death — a repository of 
memoirs, longer and shorter, pertaining to American insti- 
tutional history. He edited for the Bureau of Education a 



ADAMS AND CRAIG 17 

series of monographs on instruction in the various States of 
the Union. To his bright mind (I suspect), the idea of 
forming an American historical association is due. Cer- 
tainly he was in its early days the most efficient promoter 
of that society, and he continued to be, until his health broke 
down, the secretary and the editor of the annual reports. 

After all, surely, his highest service was in the art of in- 
spiring others; and when I think of those who came under 
his influence, Woodrow Wilson, Albert Shaw, J. F. Jame- 
son, Charles H. Levermore, D. R. Dewey, F. W. Black- 
mar, B. C. Steiner, W. W. and W. F. Willoughby, C. 
H. Haskins, Charles M. Andrews, F. J. Turner, J. M. 
Vincent, J. H. Hollander, and many more, it seems to me 
that no higher achievement could have been attained by him, 
no greater reward secured. 

Before it was publicly known that Professor Sylvester 
was to have charge of our mathematical work, Thomas 
Craig, from Lafayette College, inquired of me whether 
Sylvester was coming to us. Now, Sylvester had no popu- 
lar reputation. His writings were diffused through a mul- 
titude of scientific journals, and he had never published them 
in separate volumes. I was surprised by the inquiry of a 
youthful schoolmaster from the country, and said, " What 
do you know about Professor Sylvester?" His reply was, 
" Not to know the name of Sylvester, is to know nothing 
of modern mathematics." I said, " Very true, but is that 
all you know of him?" He then acknowledged that he 
had read some of the memoirs of this illustrious geometer. 
Then I asked what made him think that Sylvester was com- 
ing. He said that Professor Peirce, of Harvard, had told 
him. "Do you know Professor Peirce?" said I. "Not 
personally," was his reply, " but I have had several letters 
from him, and in one of them he told me that I ought to 
go to Baltimore and study with Sylvester." So I took the 
young man into confidence and told him that, although the 



18 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

arrangements were not perfected, we did expect the co- 
operation of this English savant. The young man came to 
us and accepted one of the fellowships, and from that time- 
onward until his health gave way he was a brilliant mem- 
ber of our mathematical corps. He became the successor 
of Sylvester and the associate of Newcomb in the editorial 
control of the American Journal of Mathematics and was 
thus brought into personal relations with most of the re- 
nowned mathematicians of Europe, whose letters as they 
lie before me indicate their respect for their American cor- 
respondent. His text-books were used at one time in the 
University of Cambridge, England, and his other mathe- 
matical writings were of distinct value, though they were 
not numerous. 

Among the early students one of the most brilliant was 
Dr. Keeler, latterly director of the Lick Astronomical Ob- 
servatory, in California. He came of good New England 
stock, but had been far away from all opportunities of su- 
perior education at his home in Florida. One day he ap- 
peared in Baltimore and asked leave to be received as a 
student in optics. A visitor in Florida, Mr. Charles H. 
Rockwell, an amateur astronomer of unusual ability, had 
seen him engaged in surveying land with a theodolite of his 
own construction, and had asked the future astronomer 
what career he wished to follow. Keeler replied, " I should 
like to be an optician." With remarkable insight Mr. Rock- 
well encouraged him to go to Cambridge and consult with 
Alvan Clark. This maker of telescopes said : "I cannot 
receive you as a student; go to the Sheffield School in New 
Haven and see what they will do for you." At New Haven 
they told him, " Go to Baltimore and work with Dr. Hast- 
ings." So he came to us. His means were very small, 
and he was glad to earn a little money by the making of 
diagrams, by drawing a plot of our grounds, and in other 
ways. He showed so much ability that he was encouraged 



JAMES E. KEELER 19 

to clear off our requirements for matriculation (which he 
did under the personal instruction of Professor Charles D. 
Morris), and subsequently he proceeded to the degree of 
Bachelor of Arts. Not long afterward he went to California 
with Professor Langley and aided him in original investiga- 
tions respecting the heat of the sun, on the summit of Mount 
Whitney. He became an observer in the Allegheny Ob- 
servatory, and finally he ended his career while in charge 
of the great instrument at the Lick Observatory, on Mount 
Hamilton, California, having won the highest recognition 
from all the astronomers of his day. 

These are by no means the only examples that occur to 
me of brilliant young men whom we were at once able to 
encourage. The list is long. Fortunately most of them are 
still winning reputation. Whatever service we have ren- 
dered them is largely due to the freedom of our methods, 
and to the close contact which has prevailed between the 
leading scholars and those that have come under their 
guidance, and above all to the brilliant and learned men 
whose influence, often unconscious, has been the most potent 
factor in the university at Baltimore. Thus with the six 
requisites, an idea, a plan, an endowment, a faculty, appara- 
tus, and students, we proceeded to launch our bark upon 
the Patapsco. 

As the day drew near for the opening of our doors and 
the beginning of instruction the word reached as that Pro- 
fessor Huxley of London was coming to this country. We 
had already decided that, in view of the attention which 
was to be given to medicine, biology should receive a large 
amount of attention, more than ever before in America. 
That meant the study, in the laboratory, of vegetable and 
animal forms and functions, so that the eyes and hands 
and brains of the students might become prepared for the 
study of the human body in health and in disease. Huxley, 
among English-speaking people, was the leader in these 



20 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

studies. His repute as an investigator was very high, and 
as the popular interpreter and defender of biological in- 
vestigations he was without a peer. His acquaintance with 
the problems of medical education was also well known. 
As a public speaker upon scientific subjects there was no 
superior. He had rendered us a service by nominating Dr. 
Martin to the professorship of biology. The moment was 
opportune for informing the public, through the speech of 
this master, in respect to the requirements of modern medi- 
cine and the value of biological research. I do not suppose 
that anyone connected with the university had thought of 
the popular hostility toward biology. We did not know 
that to many persons this mysterious term was like a 
red flag of warning. The fact that some naturalists were 
considered irreligious filled the air with suspicions that the 
new foundation would be handed over to the Evil One. 
The sequel will show what happened. Professor Huxley 
was invited; he accepted, he came to Baltimore, he ad- 
dressed a crowded assembly — then came a storm. 

An amusing incident in this visit has been told by his 
biographer; but as my recollections differ in slight details, 
I will tell the story in my own way. 

On his arrival in Baltimore, Professor Huxley was driven 
to the country seat of Mr. Garrett, who had offered him 
hospitality and had invited a large company to meet him 
in an afternoon party. There was but one intervening 
day between his arrival, tired out by a long journey in the 
interior, and his delivery of the address. He had hardly 
reached the residence of his host before the reporters dis- 
covered him and asked for the manuscript of his speech. 
" Manuscript? " he said, " I have none. I shall speak freely 
on a theme with which I am quite familiar." " Well, pro- 
fessor," said the interlocutor, " that is all right, but our 
instructions are to send the speech to the papers in New 
York, and if you cannot give us the copy, we must take it 



PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADDRESS 21 

down as well as we can and telegraph it, for the Associated 
Press is bound to print it the morning after it is spoken." 
This was appalling, for in view of the possible inaccuracy 
of the short-hand, and the possible condensation of the wire- 
hand, the lecturer was afraid that technical and scientific 
terms might not be rightly reproduced. " You can have 
your choice, professor," said the urbane reporter, " to give 
us the copy or to let us do the best we can; for report the 
speech we shall." The professor yielded, and the next day 
he walked up and down in his room at Mr. Garrett's, dic- 
tating to a stenographer, in cold and irresponsive seclusion, 
the speech which he expected to make before a receptive 
and hospitable assembly. 

I sat very near the orator as he delivered the address in 
the Academy of Music, and noticed that, although he kept 
looking at the pile of manuscript on the desk before him, 
he did not turn the pages over. The speech was appro- 
priate and well received, but it had no glow, and the orator 
did not equal his reputation for charm and persuasiveness. 
When the applause was over, I said to Mr. Huxley, " I 
noticed that you did not read your address; I am afraid 
the light was insufficient." " Oh," said he, " that was not 
the matter. I have been in distress. The reporters brought 
me, according to their promise, the copy of their notes. It 
was on thin translucent paper, and to make it legible, they 
put clean white sheets between the leaves. That made such 
bulk that I removed the intermediate leaves, and when I 
stood up at the desk I found I could not read a sentence. 
So I have been in a dilemma — not daring to speak freely, 
and trying to recall what I dictated yesterday and allowed 
the reporters to send to New York." If he used an epithet 
before the word " reporters " I am sure he was justified, 
but I forget what it was. 

Those of us who wanted guidance and encouragement 
from a leading advocate of biological studies were rewarded 






22 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

and gratified by the address, and have often referred to it 
as it was printed in his American discourses and afterward 
in his collected works. 

We had sowed the wind and were to reap the whirl- 
wind. The address had not been accompanied by any ac- 
cessories except the presentation of the speaker, no other 
speech, no music, no opening prayer, no benediction. I had 
proposed to two of the most religious trustees that there 
should be an introductory prayer, and they had said no, 
preferring that the discourse should be given as popular 
lectures are given at the Peabody Institute and elsewhere, 
without note or comment. 

It happened that a correspondent of one of the religious 
weeklies in New York was present, and he wrote a sensa- 
tional letter to his paper, calling attention to the fact that 
there was no prayer. This was the storm-signal. Many 
people who thought that a university, like a college, could 
not succeed unless it was under some denominational con- 
trol, were sure that this opening discourse was but an over- 
ture' to the play of irreligious and anti-religious actors. 
Vain it was to mention the unquestioned orthodoxy of the 
trustees, and the ecclesiastical ties of those who had been 
selected to be the professors. Huxley was bad enough; 
Huxley without a prayer was intolerable. 

Some weeks afterward a letter came into my hands ad- 
dressed to a Presbyterian minister of Baltimore, by a 
Presbyterian minister of New York. Both have now 
gone where such trifles have no importance, so I venture 
to give the letter, quoting from the autograph. The italics 
are mine: 

"New York, 3 Oct., 1876. 
" Thanks for your letter, my friend, and the information you give. 
The University advertised Huxley's Lecture as the ' Opening ' and 
so produced the impression which a Baltimore correspondent in- 
creased by taking the thing as it was announced. /* was bad 






RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE 23 

enough to invite Huxley. It were better to have asked God to be 
present. It would have been absurd to ask them both. 

" I am sorry Gilman began with Huxley. But it is possible yet to 
redeem the University from the stain of such a beginning. No 
one will be more ready than I to herald a better sign." 

It was several years before the black eye gained its nat- 
ural colour. People were on the alert for impiety, and were 
disappointed to find no traces of it — that the faculty was 
made up of just such men as were found in other faculties, 
and that in their private characters and their public utter- 
ances there was nothing to awaken suspicion or justify mis- 
trust. It was a curious fact, unobserved and perhaps un- 
known, that four of the first seven professors came from 
the families of gospel ministers, and a fifth of the group 
of six was a former Fellow of Oriel and a man of quite 
unusual devoutness. The truth is that the public had been 
so wonted to regard colleges as religious foundations, and 
so used to their control by ministers, that it was not easy 
to accept at once the idea of an undenominational founda- 
tion controlled by laymen. Harvard and Cornell have 
both encountered the like animosity. At length the preju- 
dice wore away without any manifesto or explanation from 
the authorities. From the beginning there was a voluntary- 
assembly daily held for Christian worship; soon the Young 
Men's Christian Association was engrafted; the students 
became active in the churches and Sunday-schools and chari- 
ties of Baltimore; some graduates entered the ministry, 
and one became a bishop, while the advanced courses in 
Hebrew, Greek, history, and philosophy, were followed by 
ministers of many Protestant denominations, Catholic 
priests and Jewish rabbis. It is also gratifying to remem- 
ber that many of the ministers of Baltimore, Presbyterian, 
Episcopalian, Methodist, and Baptist, have intrusted their 
sons to the guidance of the local seminary whose influ- 
ence and instructions they could readily watch and carefully 



24 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

estimate. As I consider the situation, I wish it were possible 
for religious people to agree upon what should be taught 
to the young, in respect to religious doctrine, or at least to 
unite in religious worship, yet I cannot forget that, in ages 
and in countries where one authority has been recognised 
and obeyed, neither intellect nor morals have attained their 
highest development. 



JOHNS HOPKINS AND THE 
TRUSTEES OF HIS CHOICE 









II 

JOHNS HOPKINS AND THE TRUSTEES OF HIS CHOICE 

The death of Johns Hopkins occurred December 24, 1873, 
when he was well advanced in his seventynninth year. 
He was widely known and respected in Maryland, Vir- 
ginia, and North Carolina, as a merchant who had accu- 
mulated a large fortune by habits of industry and frugality, 
and by great financial ability. In his later years he was among 
the foremost of the moneyed men of Baltimore, which had 
been the place of his residence since he came to it as a boy 
from his country home in Anne Arundel County. He 
was President of the Merchants' National Bank, one of 
the most important banks of the city, and he was for many 
years a Director of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and, 
of course, familiar with its financial affairs. His forbears 
were among the early settlers of Maryland, and he grew 
up in the habits of integrity, temperance and religion char- 
acteristic of the Society of Friends, to which his parents 
belonged. His sisters looked after his household ; and one 
of his nieces has told me how well she remembers that 
he loved to gather around his table the brightest and most 
intellectual people of the community — in winter, at the 
stately dwelling-house still standing in Saratoga Street, near 
Charles Street (next to the rectory of St. Paul's Church), 
and in summer, at a spacious mansion, surrounded by trees, 
lawns, and gardens, two miles from the heart of the city. 
His estate, which was known as Clifton, is now one of 
the system of parks surrounding the city of Baltimore — 
Druid Hill, Wyman, Homewood, Montebello, Clifton, 

27 



28 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

and Patterson — a suburban circle of great beauty, afford- 
ing recreation and enjoyment to the inhabitants of every 
part of the city. 

Johns Hopkins was not a man who cared for display, 
or who could approve extravagance or luxury. In town 
he had his books and pictures, and in the country he en- 
joyed the flowers, trees, and shrubs which were cultivated 
at Clifton. The economical habits of his youth continued 
with him to the end of his days. Yet he was not unmindful 
of the obligations of a rich man to the place of his residence, 
and he made generous gifts to the Maryland Institute, the 
Young Men's Christian Association, and to other objects. 
Many instances are remembered of the aid which he gave 
to young men who needed financial support and in whose 
character he confided. There are no indications that he 
ever paid much attention to educational or philanthropic 
work. He did not care to travel, and there is no record 
of his visits to public institutions for the promotion of char- 
ity or learning. 

Several years before his death he caused two corpora- 
tions to be formed for the maintenance, the one of a hos- 
pital, and the other of a university. Their existence was, 
of course, made known to the public, and when he died 
there was great curiosity as to the amount set apart for their 
endowment and as to the conditions. It presently ap- 
peared that, after provisions for his nearest of kin and other 
legacies, seven millions of dollars would be equally divided 
between the two institutions which were to perpetuate his 
name. He had demonstrated by his own experience an 
ancient saying of which he may never have heard : " Mag- 
num vectigal est parsimonium." To the university he 
gave his estate at Clifton, and the shares which he owned 
in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad; and to the hospital 
he gave a large number of warehouses, and a valuable site 
which he had bought for the hospital. 



JOHNS HOPKINS AND HIS TRUSTEES 29 

As a sort of supplement to the will, a remarkable letter 
was addressed to the trustees of the hospital, in which, 
with great sagacity, the founder directed that the hospital, 
when completed, should be a part of the medical school, 
for which provision was made in the university which he 
founded. Much depended on this important provision. The 
two Boards of Control, holding separate purses, and meet- 
ing separately, have acted in accord. Originally nine of 
the twelve trustees were trustees in both corporations, and 
although this proportion has not been uniformly maintained, 
the importance of official co-operation has never been for- 
gotten. From the beginning it has been clearly under- 
stood and acknowledged that the sphere of the Univer- 
sity was education, and the sphere of the Hospital the 
relief of suffering. 

The selection of trustees for the discharge of great re- 
sponsibilities is always perplexing. They must not only be 
men of honour, wise and unselfish, but they must be able 
to get on with one another. The board must include so 
many persons that a diversity of views may be represented; 
it must be so limited that the personal attention of every 
member is secured. Probably the world recognises chiefly 
the largeness of Johns Hopkins' bounty, its largeness in 
amount, in scope, and in freedom from minor restrictions; 
but he might have failed in the choice of men to administer 
his trust. On the contrary, he made a capital selection, from 
among laymen, resident in Baltimore, in middle life, inde- 
pendent, and acquainted with affairs. 

Yet he was not infallible, as was shown by his absolute 
confidence in the prosperity of the Baltimore and Ohio 
Railroad, which was indicated by his legacy to the Univer- 
sity of fifteen thousand shares in that company, and by his 
injunction to the trustees to watch over and protect the 
interests of the road. At that time the road paid annually 
ten per cent, dividends, and it was understood that a large 



30 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

dividend, share-for-share, would be declared at an early 
day, from undistributed increments. The shares were then 
quoted at nearly 200, the par being 100. Under these cir- 
cumstances, it did not then appear strange that when the 
board was organised, several years before the death of the 
founder, the chairman of the finance committee of the 
railroad, Mr. Galloway Cheston, was made president of 
the trustees of the University, and Mr. John W. Garrett, 
the president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, was 
made chairman of the finance committee in the University 
board. I mention these facts in order that the close union 
of these two corporations, which continued until the failure 
of the road to pay any dividends, may be borne in mind 
when the finances of the University are considered. The 
combination was most unfortunate. It was likewise a mis- 
fortune that so many eggs were placed in one basket, 
and that the founder explicitly advised that they be so 
carried. 

Let me now characterise the men of his choice. Mr. 
Galloway Cheston, first president of the trustees, was a 
merchant of the highest credit, who sent his ships to dis- 
tant ports, was careful in his investments and a good ad- 
viser in all financial matters. He was a man of the best 
social standing, fond of reading, a lover of flowers, ex- 
tremely simple and unostentatious in his daily life, and a 
worshipper in the Society of Friends, to which his wife 
belonged, but with which he did not personally unite. 
He lived to an advanced age and died with the respect of 
all who knew him. As a presiding officer, he was excellent. 
His mode of conducting the business was exemplary. While 
he gave everyone a chance to be heard, he did not encourage 
wandering talk, and when he thought that enough had been 
said, he would put the question to the vote of his colleagues, 
and declare the decision. 

The Honourable George W. Dobbin, who succeeded 



JOHNS HOPKINS AND HIS TRUSTEES 31 

Mr. Cheston as chairman of the board, was one of the 
judges of the Supreme Bench in Baltimore. He was keenly 
alive to the progress of modern science. He read those 
books and periodicals which recorded the latest discoveries. 
He attended scientific lectures. He maintained a work- 
shop or laboratory at his country seat near Baltimore. 
He observed the heavens. He practised photography. He 
followed closely the modern development of electrical in- 
ventions. In the University councils science always had an 
earnest and intelligent advocate while Judge Dobbin was 
alive. 

When death released him, far on in years, his suc- 
cessor in office was Charles Morton Stewart (not one of 
the original trustees), a merchant in every way qualified 
to take the place of Galloway Cheston. Like him, he 
sailed his ships in distant seas, and as a banker he was in 
close relations with distinguished firms in London and 
Paris, as well as in New York. He was a much younger 
man than either of his predecessors. He had received a 
liberal education, partly in Switzerland; he had travelled 
widely; and, as the father of several bright sons, he was 
eager to make the University so good in all respects that 
boys need not be sent away from Baltimore to secure their 
proper training. Five of his sons have proceeded to the 
degree of Bachelor of Arts. His hospitality at Cliff Holme, 
in the Green Spring Valley, and in town, his generosity 
and enthusiasm were limited only by his ability, and his 
ability was very great. 

Closely associated with Judge Dobbin in the service of 
the University was the Chief Judge of the Supreme Bench 
in Baltimore, the Honourable George William Brown, 
a graduate of Rutgers College. He held the position of 
mayor at the outbreak of the Civil War; he gave the orders 

I to burn the bridges which connected the city with the 
North, and he bravely marched at the head of the Massa- 



32 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

chusetts regiments, for their protection, as they passed 
through the city in the face of an angry and defiant crowd. 
For reasons which were never promulgated, he suffered 
imprisonment in Fort Warren, doubtless because he was 
suspected of Southern sympathies. Of all these stirring 
events he has written the story. Judge Brown was a man 
of the highest personal character, a good writer, a good 
lawyer, a good citizen, always ready to promote the wel- 
fare of the city of his birth. In the Peabody Institute, 
the Pratt Library, the Maryland Historical Society, the 
Bar Library, as well as in the Johns Hopkins Hospital, he 
was a most faithful trustee. When he retired from the bench, 
the principal officers of these institutions addressed him a 
letter of admiration and affection. 

While the persons who have been named gave dignity 
to the board and weight to its decisions, the labouring oar, 
at the outset, was intrusted to one who bore a name already 
distinguished throughout the land. Reverdy Johnson, Junior, 
was a good French and German scholar, who had taken 
his degree in law at Heidelberg, had travelled widely, loved 
books, and was thoroughly appreciative of all the conserva- 
tive influences which tend to the promotion of knowledge. 
He was the chairman of the executive committee for many 
years, until his voluntary retirement from the board by 
reason of his advancing years and infirm health. He is 
the only one of the original trustees who is living as I write 
these pages. Mr. Johnson was not a man eager for novel- 
ties, and he did not care for any of those proceedings which 
awaken popular attention and applause. But when he was 
once persuaded as to the course which should be pursued, 
he was its efficient promoter. He was incessant in his at- 
tention to the business of the University, and, before the 
selection of the president, conducted its correspondence. 

The services of Francis T. King were chiefly directed 
to the construction of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He 



JOHNS HOPKINS AND HIS TRUSTEES 33 

was president of the Hospital board, and from the time 
that he assumed the responsibility, until his death, he was 
assiduous in watching every detail. He had the art of 
choosing good counsellors — one of the most serviceable be- 
ing Dr. John S. Billings, U. S. A. — and the wisdom to 
accept their suggestions. He could not be hurried or driven, 
but steadily, with ample consideration, he directed the con- 
struction of that great group of buildings which embodied 
every important improvement that could be thought of for 
the conduct of an infirmary. The story of his labours 
belongs to the Hospital; but here it must be said that his 
presence in the University board was not nominal. His 
broad mind seized at once upon every question that came 
up, and while he was most useful in binding the Hospital 
and the University together, his influence was always felt 
in the discussion of other subjects. 

The services of the Honourable Charles J. M. Gwinn 
were of fundamental importance. A graduate of Prince- 
ton, a leading member of the bar, and in later life Attor- 
ney-General of Maryland, his legal acumen and his powers 
of exact expression made him most serviceable in the prep- 
aration of legal documents and in the drafting of important 
papers. The will of the founder was drafted by him, and 
to him, in a large degree (as I believe), may be attributed 
the letter of Johns Hopkins in respect to medical education. 
He continued in the service of Johns Hopkins, as a member 
of the two boards, until his death. 

Francis White, who married the niece of Johns Hopkins, 
was one of the three executors of his will, and the original 
treasurer. The other executors were Mr. King and Mr. 
Gwinn. Mr. White served the University without any 
compensation for a period of fully thirty years. He was 
cautious, attentive to details, well versed in financial affairs, 
and thoroughly interested in everything that promoted the 
welfare of the institution with whose entire history he was 



34 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

intimately acquainted. When in town he was in attendance 
almost every day at the office of the University. He is 
entitled to credit and remembrance as a citizen who gave 
to the services of the public the best of his powers, without 
any sort of pecuniary recognition or advantage. One of the 
professorships is named after him, in recognition of a gift 
of one hundred thousand dollars, in addition to several gifts 
of less amount. 

Two of the nephews of Johns Hopkins, William and 
Lewis N., were respectively the secretaries of the two 
boards. They did not undertake many arduous duties in 
the management, but their interest was unflagging. The 
suggestions of Lewis, the younger one of these two cousins, 
were sometimes of great sagacity. For example — if I 
am not mistaken — it was he who first thought that it might 
be possible to induce the city to purchase the estate at Clif- 
ton. Like Francis White, he was a graduate of Haverford 
College. 

Dr. John Fonerden was another of the original board. 
He was a physician, highly respected, who died before the 
organisation of the University. 

His place was filled by the choice of Dr. James Carey 
Thomas, who became one of the most active, suggestive, and 
devoted members of the board. His mind was so consti- 
tuted that he could maintain a living interest in a great 
variety of subjects. Partly by his profession as a medical 
practitioner, and partly by his duties as a minister of the 
Society of Friends, he was brought into contact with " all 
sorts and conditions of men." He knew the community 
well, and gathered up, to the great advantage of the Uni- 
versity, the opinions and comments which were afloat. While 
his services were manifold, especially in the promotion of 
literature, he was of the greatest value by reason of his 
acquaintance with medical men and the requirements of 
modern medical education. He was an important factor 



JOHNS HOPKINS AND HIS TRUSTEES 35 

in the maintenance of close relations between the Hospital 
and the University, and in the advocacy of high standards 
of instruction. He also took a deep interest in the promo- 
tion of the religious welfare of the students. As president 
of the Young Men's Christian Association in Baltimore, 
he brought over to the University many of its methods; 
and in social gatherings, sometimes at his house and some- 
times in the University rooms, he exerted an influence for 
good which has never been surpassed, if it has been equalled, 
by that of anyone else. He might truly be called " an all- 
round man." He was never wearied, never dull, never 
negligent, always responsive, always cordial, and always 
considerate, even toward those from whom he differed. 

Another member of the Society of Friends selected by 
Johns Hopkins was Thomas M. Smith. At the time when 
the University was organised his health was impaired, and 
before long he was removed by death, so that his influence 
upon the institution was slight. 

It remains to speak of Mr. John W. Garrett, who was 
for many years foremost among the citizens of Baltimore, 
partly because of his commanding personality and uncom- 
mon ability, and partly because of the official position which 
he held as president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 
then a dominant factor in the business of the community. 
Mr. Garrett had been a student in Lafayette College. He 
had seen much of men in public life, and had been an ac- 
tive participant in the railroad activities of the Civil War. 
His country seat, at Montebello, was adjacent to that of 
Johns Hopkins. They were close friends, and must have 
had many confidential talks with respect to the proposed 
foundations. In the early days of the University Mr. Gar- 
rett was most co-operative. He opened his house to the 
professors and lecturers, as they came on from time to time, 
and in other ways showed his strong desire for the suc- 
cess of the institution. Unfortunately he differed in opin- 



36 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

ion from most of the trustees regarding the policy which 
should be pursued in the construction of buildings in the 
heart of Baltimore. This alienated him from active serv- 
ice, and before the controversy was closed his health be- 
came seriously impaired, and his death soon followed. 

The persons now mentioned (excepting Dr. Thomas and 
Mr. Stewart) were members of the original board. Among 
those who followed them and are no longer living, mention 
should be made of Mr. J. Hall Pleasants, who was chair- 
man of the building committee when several of the most 
important structures were built; Dr. Alan P. Smith, a 
well-known surgeon, descendant of a long line of eminent 
physicians whose names are identified with the history of 
American medicine; and Mr. William T. Dixon, an excellent 
successor to Mr. King in the presidency of the Hospi- 
tal board. Among those who are living I will only mention 
Mr. James L. McLane, fourth President of the Board of 
Trustees. 

The original board included two judges of the Supreme 
Court in Baltimore, two other members who belonged 
to the legal profession, one physician (who was also a 
minister of the Society of Friends) ; and seven who were 
in business. During the Civil War the majority had been, 
like the founder, Union men; but the temper of all was 
conciliatory, peace-loving, and disposed to heal the divi- 
sions which had rent society in twain. Seven were Friends, 
four were attendants at Episcopal churches, and one was 
an Independent Presbyterian. I never knew ecclesiastical 
preferences to govern the action of a single member of the 
board. Nearly all of them had received a college educa- 
tion, or its equivalent. 

When the last will and testament of the founder was 
proved, the work of the trustees began, and they took it 
up with the zest of discoverers. They had a full treasury, a 
free field, a lofty purpose. They began by collecting 



JOHNS HOPKINS AND HIS TRUSTEES 37 

books on university education, including histories of insti- 
tutions. They opened correspondence with good authori- 
ties. Several of them visited Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Ann 
Arbor, and Charlottesville, two of the oldest, three of the 
youngest of American institutions. They invited three 
men of great experience to visit Baltimore, and they ques- 
tioned them, minutely, in the presence of a shorthand 
writer, in respect to all the problems which then exercised 
their minds. Finally they selected a president, whose name 
(without his knowledge) had been independently suggested 
to them by several of their counsellors. They acceded to 
his request for a personal interview before they committed 
themselves, and he came on from California to see them. 
He has a distinct remembrance of that important meet- 
ing. It occurred in the front room of the second story of 
a building (destroyed in the great fire) on North Charles 
Street, above a store in which Bibles were sold, hence called 
" The Bible House." The meeting took place late in the 
afternoon of December 29, 1874. All the trustees except 
Mr. Gwinn, who was ill, were present. They were a very 
sedate, perhaps they might be called a very solemn, body. 
After the candidate had been personally introduced to every 
one of them, he was requested to give his impressions of 
the situation, which had been explained to him on the pre- 
vious evening by Mr. Johnson, Mr. Cheston, Mr. King, 
Dr. Thomas, and, possibly, one or two others. In these 
remarks he said that, if the purpose of the trustees was sim- 
ply to establish another college, or to aim only at local 
benefits, the problem would not interest him; but if they 
would seize the opportunity to establish a university which 
should extend its influence far and wide, throughout the 
land, it would be a privilege, as well as an honour, to be 
associated in the work; without regard to their political, 
sectional, or ecclesiastical belongings, the best professors 
should be brought together, and the most advanced stu- 



38 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

dents should be invited to follow their instructions. The 
trustees heartily responded to these views; and in a meet- 
ing the next day, when the candidate was not present, they 
chose him to be their leader. Having been released from 
the service of the University of California, the president- 
elect came to the East early in the following spring. 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



Ill 

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 

The public were naturally impatient to know what sort 
of an institution was to be established in Baltimore, and 
accordingly on the 1st of January, 1876, the following an- 
nouncement was made of fundamental principles by which 
it was proposed that the new institution should be governed. 
It is of interest to enquire how closely these positions have 
been maintained, but the answer I leave for others. 

It is the desire of the authorities, I said at that time 
(speaking in the name of the Trustees), that the institution 
now taking shape should forever be free from the influences 
of ecclesiasticism or partisanship, as those terms are used 
in narrow and controversial senses; that all departments of 
learning, — mathematical, scientific, literary, historical, phil- 
osophical, — should be promoted, as far as the funds at 
command will permit, the new departments of research re- 
ceiving full attention, while the traditional are not slighted; 
that the instructions should be as thorough, as advanced and 
as special as the intellectual condition of the country will 
permit ; that the glory of the University should rest upon the 
character of the teachers and scholars here brought together, 
and not upon their number, nor upon the buildings con- 
structed for their use; that its sphere of influence should 
be national, while at the same time all the local institutions 
of education and science should be quickened by its power; 
and finally that among the professional departments, special 
attention should be first given to the sciences bearing upon 
medicine, surgery, and hygiene, for which some provision 

41 



42 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

has been made by the munificent gift of our founder to 
establish The Johns Hopkins Hospital. 

The selection of professors and teachers upon whom will 
devolve the instruction of youth, the chief work of the 
University, is peculiarly difficult because there are here no 
traditions for guidance, no usages in respect to the distribu- 
tion of subjects, and none in respect to the kind of instruction 
to be given ; and also because the plans of the Trustees must 
depend very much upon the character of the teachers whom 
they bring together. 

A very large number of candidates have been suggested 
to the Trustees ; but among them all there are but a few who 
have attained distinction as investigators or as teachers. Most 
of those whose names have been thus presented are young 
men, usually of much promise, who have not yet had an 
opportunity to show their intellectual power in any depart- 
ment of higher instruction; and yet among this very class 
a discerning choice will doubtless discover those who are 
soon to be the men of scientific and literary renown. The 
Trustees promise to open freely the doors of promotion to 
those young men who seem to be capable of the highest work, 
— appointing them at first for restricted and definite periods. 
Moreover they hope for a while to gain much of the influence 
and co-operation of older and more distinguished men by in- 
viting one and another to come here from time to time with 
courses of lectures. But the idea is not lost sight of that 
the power of the University will depend upon the character 
of its resident staff of permanent professors. It is their 
researches in the library and the laboratory; their utterances 
in the classroom and in private; their example as students 
and investigators, and as champions of the truth; their pub- 
lications, through the journals and the scientific treatises, 
which will make the University of Baltimore an attraction 
to the best students, and serviceable to the intellectual growth 
of the land. 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 43 

In selecting a staff of teachers, the Trustees have deter- 
mined to consider especially the devotion of the candidate 
to some particular line of study and the certainty of his 
eminence in that specialty; the power to pursue independent 
and original investigation, and to inspire the young with 
enthusiasm for study and research; the willingness to co- 
operate in building up a new institution; and the freedom 
from tendencies toward ecclesiastical or sectional contro- 
versies. The Trustees will not be governed by denomi- 
national or geographical considerations in the appointment of 
any teacher; but will endeavour to select the best person 
whose services they can secure in the position to be filled, 
irrespective of the place where he was born, or the college 
in which he was trained, or the religious body with which 
he has been enrolled. 



THE ORIGINAL FACULTY 



IV, 

THE ORIGINAL FACULTY 

In the future an antiquary with such powers as those of 
James Ford Rhodes may delve among the catalogues, reports 
and addresses which have appeared during the last thirty 
years, and may discuss the progress of higher education dur- 
ing that eventful period, as Mr. Rhodes has treated of 
political affairs since the Compromise of 1850. Such a 
writer has not yet appeared in the domain of education, 
although a vast amount of material has been collected for 
him by Dr. Harris and his predecessors in the Government 
Bureau at Washington. If the antiquary is thorough he 
will discover, and if he is just he will acknowledge the influ- 
ence of the Johns Hopkins University upon the development 
of American Universities. I have been too close an observer, 
too confidential a participant in its affairs to undertake 
the historian's task. I stand too near to the partners, and 
am bound to them by ties of personal friendship and of 
official intimacy; I have been too familiar with their aspir- 
ations and endeavours, their disappointments and successes, 
to estimate their worth, and if I made the attempt, I should 
probably dwell on minor incidents and entertaining anecdotes 
which made a strong impression at the time, but are of no 
lasting significance. I will, nevertheless, add some further 
reminiscences of a veteran observer. 

Those of us who initiated, in 1876, the methods of in- 
struction and government in the new foundation at Balti- 
more were young men. Sylvester alone had more than three 
score years to his credit. Gildersleeve and I, now patriarchs, 
were forty-five years old. Morris was a little older. Remsen, 

47 



48 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

Rowland, and Martin were not thirty years of age. The 
original Associates, many of whom became leaders in their 
several departments of study, Adams, Brooks, Cross, Elliott, 
Hastings, Morse, Scott, were still younger. All were full 
of youthful enthusiasm and energy. There were none to 
say, "This is not our way"; none to fasten on our ankles 
the fetters of academic usage. Duty, youth, hope, ambition, 
and the love of work were on our side. Laboratories were 
to be constructed, instruments and books to be bought, col- 
leagues and assistants to be chosen, regulations to be form- 
ulated, conditions of admission, promotion and graduation 
to be determined, plans of study to be matured. 

As I have intimated, we brought to the council room 
many prejudices and preferences derived from our previous 
training and from our personal idiosyncracies. Two of the 
staff had been professors in the University of Virginia, two 
had been Fellows in the great English universities, two had 
received degrees in German universities and others had 
studied abroad, two had been connected with New England 
colleges, two had been teachers in scientific schools, and one 
had been at the head of a State university. Our discussions 
were free and familiar, as of friends around a council board. 
It was rarely, if ever, necessary to " make a motion " or to 
put a question to the vote. By processes well known to 
Friends, " the sense of the meeting " was taken and recorded. 

It was our dominant purpose to hold on to the principles 
and adhere to the methods which experience had established 
in this and in other countries, and at the same time to keep 
free from the slavery of traditions and conditions which are 
often more embarrassing and retarding than positive laws. 
We often reminded one another that the rule of to-day was 
liable to become the custom of to-morrow, the immemorial 
usage of next month, the iron-clad law of the future, and we 
tried to preserve spontaneity of action, not only for ourselves, 
but for our successors. " Evolution " was then beginning 



THE ORIGINAL FACULTY 49 

to be the note of the times, and our best advisers urged upon 
us " Development." " Be slow," they said, " plant good 
seeds and see what they yield." So we did not undertake 
to establish a German university, nor an English university, 
but an American university, based upon and applied to the 
existing institutions of this country. Not only did we have 
no model to be followed ; we did not even draw up a scheme 
or programme for the government of ourselves, our asso- 
ciates and successors. For a long time our proceedings were 
" tentative," and this term was used so often that it became 
a by-word for merriment. Such considerations carried with 
them this corollary. Every head of a department was 
allowed the utmost freedom in its development, subject only 
to such control as was necessary for harmonious co-operation. 
He could select his own assistants, choose his own books and 
apparatus, devise his own plans of study, — always provided 
that he worked in concord with his fellows. To secure this 
concord and the support of the Trustees, it was necessary 
that close relations should be kept up with the President, 
and that wishes and wants, purposes and plans, should be 
freely talked over with him. As the University grew, it 
was not so easy to maintain this usage, but it was maintained, 
and is still a most serviceable feature in the adminis- 
tration. 

The Trustees wisely refrained from interference with the 
faculty, to whom the government and instruction of the 
students was entrusted. The Trustees made the appoint- 
ments, it is true, but they were always guided by the counsel 
of the President and professors. They awarded the degrees, 
the scholarships and the fellowships, but only on the nomi- 
nation and recommendation of the academic staff. The 
professors, on the other hand, had no part in the financial 
management. They were not consulted in respect to invest- 
ments: they did not fix the salaries nor the appropriations 
for the library and apparatus. In the construction of build- 



50 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

ings their wishes were paramount, their advice indispensable ; 
but the building contracts were in the hands, exclusively, of 
the trustees. 

An enormous number of applications for professorships 
were received, and filed; but I do not think they had much 
weight with the Trustees, who, according to their promises, 
kept themselves aloof from all dangerous entanglements, and 
were determined to make their selections with sole regard 
to the welfare of the University. They preferred to con- 
sult, confidentially, those on whose judgment they relied, 
rather than to be governed by the written endorsements and 
recommendations which came by every mail, often supported 
by strong personal influence. Of this I have previously 
spoken. As I speak elsewhere at length of Sylvester and 
Rowland, I will here quote what is said of them in Professor 
Simon Newcomb's " Reminiscences.' ' 

One of the most remarkable mathematicians of the age, Professor 
J. J. Sylvester, had recently severed his connection with the Royal 
Military Academy at Woolwich, and it had been decided to invite 
him to the chair of mathematics at the new University. It was con- 
sidered desirable to have men of similar world-wide eminence in 
charge of the other departments in science. But this was found to 
be impracticable, and the policy adopted was to find young men 
whose reputation was yet to be made, and who would be the lead- 
ing men of the future, instead of belonging to the past. 

All my experience would lead me to say that the selection of the 
coming man in science is almost as difficult as the selection of the 
youth who are to become senators of the United States. The suc- 
cess of the university in finding the young men it wanted has been 
one of the most remarkable features of the Johns Hopkins Univer- 
sity. Of this the lamented Rowland affords the most striking, but 
by no means the only instance. Few could have anticipated that 
the modest and scarcely known youth selected for the chair of 
physics would not only become the leading man of his profession in 
our country, but one of the chief promoters of scientific research 
among us. Mathematical study and research of the highest order 
now commenced, not only at Baltimore, but at Harvard, Columbia, 
and other centres of learning, until, to-day, we are scarcely behind 
any nation in our contributions to the subject. 



THE ORIGINAL FACULTY 51 

It sometimes seemed as if Sylvester was the youngest of 
the academic council, so exuberant was he in suggestion, so 
unexpected and emphatic in his counsels, so proud of his 
pupils, so irascible and so conciliatory. Every step forward 
that he took in his chosen department of mathematics de- 
lighted him, as an explorer is delighted with the discovery 
of a mountain peak or a hidden source. Every promising 
follower seemed to him a genius. 

Ample recognition of his eminence as a mathematician has 
been given in the public notices of his life, especially in the 
biographical address delivered in Baltimore by his younger 
colleague and associate, Professor Fabian Franklin, and in 
a compact notice that is printed in the " National Dictionary 
of Biography." It was always a wonder to me that a person 
of such acknowledged pre-eminence received no academic 
distinction during his long residence in this country; and I 
have never been quite satisfied as to the reasons why this was 
so. He proved to be a most stimulating associate and teacher. 
His enthusiasm was unfailing, and when he was called, seven 
years later, to the University of Oxford, as Savilian Pro- 
fessor, he declared that his residence in Baltimore had been 
the most quickening and prolific period of his intellectual 
life. 

As already stated, it was about this time that the modern 
methods of studying animal and vegetable life were coming 
into vogue. The name of " biology " had been introduced 
into English parlance by Professor Huxley, and it had almost 
eliminated the old term " natural history." Looking forward 
to the establishment of a School of Medicine, it was clear 
that a preparatory study of the biological sciences should be 
encouraged by methods superior to any which were then 
employed in this country, and of far greater comprehensive- 
ness. There was in Cambridge University a promising stu- 
dent of physiology, the pupil of Michael Foster and the 
assistant of Professor Huxley, Henry Newell Martin, a 



52 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

graduate of London University and of the University of 
Cambridge. He was well acquainted with all the newer 
methods of physiological research. He had won many 
honours and was regarded as one of the coming men in his 
chosen field. He came to Baltimore and established the first 
American biological laboratory. A score of successors fol- 
lowed. The advances of science since that date have called 
for so much subdivision that the term " biology " is falling 
into disuse; but, as it was employed at that time, and is still 
employed to a considerable extent, it meant the study of the 
structure and functions of living plants and animals. It is 
now hard to believe what prejudices then prevailed in respect 
to " biology." The science was dreaded as if it were to 
overthrow, or at least to undermine, religious belief. To 
this study Dr. Martin gave a noteworthy impulse, and the 
methods which he introduced were soon followed in other 
parts of the country. In the Johns Hopkins University it 
was soon determined that no one should be encouraged to 
enter upon the study of medicine without a careful previous 
training in a physiological laboratory. The improvements 
now common in medical schools are largely based upon the 
recognition of the principle that living creatures, in their 
normal and healthy aspects, should be studied before the 
phenomena and treatment of disease, and credit should always 
be given to Dr. Martin for the skill with which he intro- 
duced among Americans the best methods of study. 

Another Englishman was added to the faculty. Professor 
Charles D'Urban Morris, a graduate of the University of 
Oxford and a fellow of Oriel College. He had acquired a 
high reputation as an enthusiastic teacher of boys, and in 
order that a love of the classics might be introduced among 
undergraduates, he was invited to become the Collegiate 
Professor of Latin and Greek. He was a man of fine pres- 
ence and of noble character, but, for some reason or other, 
the times seemed to be against him, and the number of stu- 



THE ORIGINAL FACULTY 53 

dents who elected his courses was never very large. He 
brought to Baltimore, however, the best traditions of an 
English university, and among other valuable suggestions 
which he made was the appointment of advisers to small 
groups of students, so that every one of them might be guided 
in the choice of his studies by a qualified friend. The office 
of tutor in the American colleges had then fallen into dis- 
repute, because large classes of students were assigned to the 
guidance of inexperienced teachers, whose relations were 
often quite perfunctory, and whose strength was often 
absorbed by professional studies carried on simultaneously 
with the duties of the tutorial office. The word " adviser " 
was therefore used in place of " tutor," but many of the 
functions which pertain to the English tutorial system were 
transferred to these " advisers." The need of such officers 
is now generally recognised, and I cannot but regard the 
introduction of the " preceptor system," announced at 
Princeton, as, in some degree at least, due to the conditions 
which were known to President Woodrow Wilson during 
his residence in Baltimore. 

I cannot speak freely of the immense influence that was 
exercised in the development of the plans of the Johns Hop- 
kins University by Professor Gildersleeve and Professor 
Remsen, because they are both living and both serving the uni- 
versity with increasing ability and increasing influence. For 
more than twenty-five years they were the chief counsellors 
of the President, and the authorities upon whose wisdom 
and knowledge the Trustees relied for advice. At the time 
of his appointment, Professor Gildersleeve had acquired 
great distinction in the University of Virginia. Notwith- 
standing the extremities of war, he had never lost the habits 
of the scholar who had been well trained in Gottingen. His 
removal to Baltimore gave him an opportunity to prosecute 
his studies under favourable conditions. He had free access 
to books and journals. He came into easy relations with 



54 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

other scholars. He was soon surrounded by an enthusiastic 
company of Grecians, whom he taught by what was known as 
the Seminary method. He instituted a Journal of Phil- 
ology, which became the repository of his own contributions, 
as well as of the papers prepared for its pages by other com- 
petent writers. He edited Pindar with so much ability as 
to attract the unqualified praises of some of the foremost 
scholars in England and on the Continent. His love of 
literature and his acquaintance with the best writers, ancient 
and modern, gave him great weight in all our discussions 
in respect to letters and language, and he was looked up to 
as an authority, whose learning could be relied upon and 
whose criticisms were sure to be governed by the very best 
standards. He held in this respect the foremost position, and 
there was no second. 

The services which the University received from Professor 
Gildersleeve in the promotion of literature had their parallel 
in the services of Professor Remsen, who afterward succeeded 
to the office of President. Like Professor Gildersleeve, 
after completing his introductory studies in this country, 
he had become familiar with the methods of German science, 
by long residence in Gottingen and Tubingen. While a 
professor in Williams College, of chemistry and physics, 
he had begun to publish papers upon chemistry which evinced 
so much ability that his appointment was strongly recom- 
mended to the Trustees by authorities that could not be dis- 
puted. His distinction as a chemist has been constantly 
growing from that time to this, and has been recognised by 
many honourable appointments. His influence in the Uni- 
versity was not restricted to the conduct of his laboratory 
and the promotion of his favourite science. He was a man 
who took broad views of education, and he was a good 
counsellor, especially in all that pertained to the scientific 
departments of study. He was also a worthy citizen, ready 
at any time to lend a hand for the promotion of civic welfare. 



THE ORIGINAL FACULTY 55 

The two persons last mentioned are still living and active. 
May this long be the case! The first four have all died. 
These six professors with the President constituted the 
original Academic Council. Younger men have taken the 
places of those who are gone; but the original seven must 
be considered as the initiators of the work of instruction. 

I must not fail to mention that the incipient University 
had several excellent counsellors whose names do not appear 
upon the academic staff. President Eliot was one of those 
who frequently visited Baltimore, was always ready to reply 
to an inquiry or to give counsel when requested, and, by his 
character, experience and disposition, was one of the most 
serviceable of the outside friends of the University. 

Professor Wolcott Gibbs, in the earliest days, was invited 
to become a professor in the University, and listened favour- 
ably to our proposals ; but he finally declined them on account 
of his desire to be quite free from academic duties. " Take 
Remsen and Rowland," was his advice. From him came 
the suggestion that Sir William Thomson, now Lord 
Kelvin, might be invited to Baltimore. 

We had many other excellent friends in Cambridge, 
Professors B. Peirce, Lowell, Child, Lane, Goodwin, Picker- 
ing, and Trowbridge among the number ; and in New Haven 
I gratefully recall the kind offices of Professors Brush and 
Whitney, and of Dr. Francis Bacon. 

Nor can I fail to remember the constant co-operation of 
Professor Simon Newcomb, who did not join our staff until 
after the departure of Professor Sylvester, but who was 
an occasional lecturer and a friend and adviser, from the 
earliest days. 

While I am thinking of those who encouraged us at that 
time, I am especially mindful of Mr. S. Teackle Wallis, 
a leader at the Baltimore bar, a lover of letters, and a public 
speaker of great distinction, who was unfailing in his sup- 
port of the institution in which his friends, Judge Dobbin 



56 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

and Judge Brown, were prominent managers. On a public 
occasion he delivered a most noteworthy address. Mr. 
William T. Walters was always ready to open his famous 
galleries to the professors and students, and to extend to 
them courtesies which were very gratifying. Almost from 
the earliest days, Mr. William W. Spence was our valued 
friend. He opened his house and his purse with great gen- 
erosity, and his sympathetic presence on public occasions was 
a constant encouragement. In later days, Mr. William 
Keyser was one of the very best supporters of the University. 
The house of his uncle, Mr. Samuel G. Wyman, was the 
abode of generous hospitality. Hon. Ferdinand C. Latrobe, 
repeatedly mayor of the city, and his father, the Honourable 
John H. B. Latrobe, never lost an opportunity to co-operate 
with us. Through the agency of the son, while mayor, our 
first great gift of one hundred thousand dollars was received 
from Mrs. Donovan. 



SOME NOTEWORTHY TEACHERS 
NO LONGER LIVING 



V 

SOME NOTEWORTHY TEACHERS, NO LONGER LIVING 

It cannot be too frequently brought to mind that the merit 
of a university, in the long run, depends upon the men who 
are called upon to conduct it — upon them absolutely, if not 
exclusively, for although the teachers must have such auxil- 
iaries as books and instruments, books are nothing but paper 
and ink until they are read, and instruments but brass and 
glass until craft and skill are applied to the handling. So, 
after a university has been launched, eternal vigilance is 
requisite in order that the highest standards may be kept 
up when new appointments are made, and that every member 
of the faculty may receive encouragement and help in the 
prosecution of his studies. I do not think that what is 
called " pull " has had much to do with appointments in 
American institutions, although I have known a few instances 
where " Pull " and " Push," twin reprobates, interlopers 
from other fields, have been invoked in behalf of university 
candidates. As a rule, aspirants are too well aware that 
their disqualifications will be uncovered if " Push " and 
" Pull " are cross-questioned, and that the truest evidence 
of ability is not found in the testimonials of friendship, but 
in records of the past — personal, domestic, and scholastic 
antecedents — discipline, examinations, writings, investigations, 
prizes, honours. Work performed is the surety of work that 
will be performed in future. Even without the interference 
of " Push " and " Pull," it is hard to discover the best men, 
and hard to capture them when they are discovered. There 
is a still greater difficulty in educing from every professor 

59 



60 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

the best of which he is capable. The country is full of cases 
so similar that they might be presented in the form of a 
mathematical formula. The young man of talent, especially 
when under the inspiration of a strong mind, rises rapidly, 
buoyed up by hope and elated by praise. He gets his title; 
he wins his wife; he opens his house; hospitality is expected 
of him; children come; books must be bought; journeys must 
be made; bills must be paid; in fine, the pot must be kept 
boiling. The salary which seemed so liberal for Bachelor 
proves inadequate for Benedick. Beatrice makes a difference. 
Many have to resort to expedients in order to get the neces- 
saries. Few are they who resist the levelling tendency of this 
period; who rise above the table-land upon which they are 
travelling, and reach the mountain-peaks. 

It is a great advantage to any university if the older mem- 
bers of the faculty are those who drink of the fountain of 
perennial youth — like Peirce and Gray in Cambridge, Silli- 
man and Dana in New Haven, the Le Contes in California, 
and the like — men whose enthusiasm never died out, whose 
mental and physical vigour remained unabated, and who 
found their highest pleasure in doing, and not in dozing. 
The original men at Baltimore were of this type. Others 
like them have followed. Indeed, we have been fortunate, 
from the beginning, in having, as permanent members of the 
faculty, men of inspiring qualities, men who " could light 
their own fires " and show others how to do the same — men 
who never were tired of work. 

We have been fortunate, too, in our guests. It is of 
great advantage to bring into an academical circle men from 
other universities — observing, critical, suggestive, familiar 
with different ways, looking, perhaps, for colleagues or for 
assistants, asking help, answering questions, showing methods. 
Whatever may be the conditions in other countries, I have 
no doubt that in this period of American development there 
are great advantages in calling men of renown, from a 



SOME NOTEWORTHY TEACHERS 61 

distance, into the intimacy of our secluded, if not cloistered, 
lives. To meet other travellers is almost as good as to 
travel ourselves. It may be even better. 

To illustrate these principles, I shall speak of some note- 
worthy scholars with whom we have been in familiar rela- 
tions; but I shall rarely allude to any who are living. 

The winter of 1876-77 was memorable in Baltimore. It 
was an era of good-feeling — of great expectations. The dif- 
ferences of the Civil War were not forgotten, but they re- 
ceived no emphasis. The new foundation was welcomed as 
an agency of conciliation. One evening, for example, there 
was a social " reunion " of good citizens brought together 
to show their interest in and their respect for the faculty of 
this incipient University. Men of all shades of opinion were 
assembled — Union soldiers, Confederate soldiers, judges, 
ministers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, bankers — the prom- 
inent citizens — all of them ready to welcome an institution 
devoted to science and letters. " We have had no such 
gathering," it was said, "since 1861. Men are here who 
have not met on common ground since the election of 
Lincoln." This was an auspicious beginning, never to be 
forgotten. The world was expectant, everybody was in- 
quisitive, not a few were sceptical — some may have been dis- 
trustful, none were hostile. 

In order to illustrate the activities of other universities, 
and to secure the counsel of eminent scholars in respect to 
our development, the decision had been reached already that 
academic lectures on various important and attractive themes 
should be opened to the public, and that the professors should 
come from institutions of acknowledged merit established in 
the North, South, and West. The usages of the College de 
France were in mind. Thus the instructions of a small 
faculty were to be supplemented by courses which should 
be profitable to the enrolled students, and entertaining, if 
not serviceable, to the educated public. Gildersleeve and 



62 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

Mallet, the Grecian and the chemist, were representatives 
of the inimitable methods of the University of Virginia. 
Judge Cooley, the constitutional lawyer, the distinguished 
jurist, came from the great State University of Michigan; 
and Allen, the classical-historian, from a kindred institution 
in Wisconsin. Harvard loaned to us its two leading men of 
letters, Child and Lowell. Whitney, then at the height of 
his renown, came from Yale, and likewise Francis A. Walker. 
Hilgard and Billings represented the scientific activities of 
Washington — the former chosen because of his experience 
in geodesy, and because of our desire, at that early day, to 
initiate surveys in the State of Maryland; and the latter, 
because of his acknowledged distinction in medicine, which 
was soon to be a leading department of study among us. 
Simon Newcomb, the illustrious astronomer, was another 
man of science in the service of the government. 

Each course included twenty lectures. They were given 
in a hall that held about 150 persons, and the hour was 
usually five o'clock. Ladies and gentlemen attended, with- 
out enrolment or fees, as well as the students and profes- 
sors of the University. The lecturers were accessible to 
all who wished to confer with them, and many among us 
then formed friendships which lasted until the ties were 
severed by death. Sometimes bright students were spotted 
by these visiting professors, and afterward invited to posi- 
tions of usefulness and distinction elsewhere — three at least 
to Harvard. 

Ever since that opening session, public lectures have been 
given on the plans originally projected, somewhat changed 
as to the arrangements from time to time. There are dif- 
ferences of opinion as to the value of such public courses, 
but I firmly believe in them, not because they promote exact 
scholarship or incite the hearers to investigation and study, 
but because the presence of an invigorating teacher, present- 
ing the best results of his thought, is inspiring to the 



SOME NOTEWORTHY TEACHERS 63 

younger, stimulating to the older, lovers of knowledge. 
This theme requires more than a passing paragraph, but I 
refrain from writing more. 

I have made no count of the lecturers and speakers who 
have spoken in Baltimore, but in the course of five-and- 
twenty years there must have been 300 — some, indeed, giv- 
ing but single addresses, like Huxley, Moissan, and Klein; 
others, like Cayley and Kelvin, remaining a good while. 
Thus it has come to pass that I have met upon familiar 
terms a great many of the scholars of this generation, and 
have learned to estimate their services and admire their 
genius. They and their peers, at home and abroad, are 
the men by whose learning, investigation, and publications, 
society is carried forward. The world applauds the heroes 
of great struggles, and it does so rightly; it showers its 
plaudits upon the orator; it witnesses, breathless, the 
achievements of surgeons; it calls our time the age of 
electricity; and yet it is prone to forget or overlook the 
hidden workers of the laboratory and the library, the quiet 
men who are the necessary precursors of those who are de- 
voted to the application of knowledge. It underpays them 
while they are in service; it rarely thinks of providing pen- 
sions for their advancing years, or of giving stipends to their 
families when premature death interrupts activities; the 
honours it bestows are the empty privileges of placing after 
their names a few letters of the alphabet in order to show 
their academic rank. The world knows little, until they 
are ended, of the anxieties that harass the scholar when he 
thinks of his future life — I mean his future life here below; 
it cares nothing for his family. But these quiet men of the 
desk and the den, of the pen and the book, of the balance 
and the lens, are they who have kept alive the traditions of 
literature and have extended the bounds of science. 

An English mathematician, lately a fellow in one of the 
colleges of the University of Cambridge, called on me one 



64 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

day and opened the conversation with this pleasant re- 
mark: " I have heard a great deal that is good about 
Baltimore." " Indeed," I replied, " and pray, what have 
you heard ? " " That Baltimore is a seaport which exports 
corn and imports mathematics. " This drollery was 
founded upon fact. The newspapers and the railroad men 
of the day were loud in their mention of " our terminal 
facilities" for shipping Western grain to foreign countries; 
and the new university had acquired some note by the en- 
gagement of the two most famous mathematicians of Eng- 
land — Sylvester and Cayley. 

Professor Cayley, of the University of Cambridge, spent 
a winter in Baltimore and endeared himself to all who met 
him, by his gentleness and consideration, while they felt 
honoured by an introduction to one whose renown they 
could appreciate, though they could not follow the light 
he was carrying into the mazes of modern algebra, and had 
never heard of the Abelian functions. I suppose we should 
never have secured his lectures except for that export of 
grain from America, in which Baltimore had its share. It 
was this way. The income of the Sadlerian professorship, 
which he held in the University of Cambridge, was cut 
down by the diminution of the rents that maintained it, 
and the rents were reduced by the fall in the price of 
" corn," due to the importation of our wheat by Great 
Britain. 

To us who were non-mathematical, Cayley was the 
very opposite of Sylvester. He was calm, undemonstra- 
tive, orderly. His lectures were upon a definite plan, and 
his manuscript was distinct and legible, so that it might 
have been sent at once to the printer. He was the embodi- 
ment of modesty, and yet no one who saw his fine head 
could doubt that he had force. Those who could follow 
him were profoundly impressed by his ability. He did not 
have many hearers, and most of them were mathematical 



PROFESSOR CAYLEY 65 

teachers — " a regiment of brigadiers," Sylvester called 
them. 

Here is Newcomb's appreciation of Cayley. 

" The career of Professor Cayley afforded an example of 
the spirit that impels a scientific worker of the highest class, 
and of the extent to which an enlightened community may 
honour him for what he is doing. One of the creators of 
modern mathematics, he never had any ambition beyond 
the prosecution of his favourite science. . . . His life 
was that of a man moved to investigation by an uncontrol- 
lable impulse — the only sort of man whose work is destined 
to be imperishable. Until forty years of age he was by 
profession a conveyancer. His ability was such that he 
might have gained a fortune by practising the highest 
branch of English law, if his energies had not been diverted 
in another direction. The spirit in which he pursued his 
work may be judged from an anecdote related by his friend 
and co-worker, Sylvester, who, in speaking of Cayley 's even 
and placid temper, told me that he had never seen him 
ruffled but once. Entering his office one morning, intent 
on some new mathematical thought which he was discuss- 
ing with Sylvester, he opened the letter-box in his door 
and found a bundle of papers relating to a law case which 
he was asked to take up. The interruption was too much. 
He flung the papers on the table with remarks more for- 
cible than complimentary concerning the person who had 
distracted his attention at such an inopportune moment. 
In 1863 he was made a professor at Cambridge, where, 
no longer troubled with the intricacies of land tenure, he 
published one investigation after another with ceaseless ac- 
tivity, to the end of his life." 

Professor Sylvester spent seven years with us, the seven 
which preceded his seventieth birthday. He left Baltimore 
to enter upon the Savilian professorship in the University 
of Oxford, and he died the incumbent of that post in 1897. 



66 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

The service in Johns Hopkins was not his first experience 
as a professor in this country, for when quite a young man 
he had been one of the brilliant staff of the University of 
Virginia, and stories may still be heard at Charlottesville 
respecting the manifestations of his irascible disposition while 
he was there resident. It was at the earnest request of Ben- 
jamin Peirce and Joseph Henry, men of science both emi- 
nent and wise, that I called upon Sylvester in London, in- 
troduced by Sir Joseph Hooker, the botanist, then president 
of the Royal Society of London. It was obvious that the 
mathematician was willing, perhaps eager, to be called to 
Baltimore. He was harassed by what seemed to him a 
grievous wrong, his displacement by the government from 
the post which he had held at the military college in Wool- 
wich ; his pecuniary resources were limited ; and he longed 
not only for a salary, but for the recognition of a univer- 
sity appointment, which for no fault of his own had been 
denied him in England. Because he was a Jew, he had not 
even been able to take a baccalaureate degree, although 
he was eminent even thus early as a mathematician. I was 
not so ready to invite him as he was to receive an invita- 
tion, for there were many intimations that he was " hard 
to get on with." More than one American correspondent 
reminded me of the importance of co-operation among the 
members of a faculty, with dark hints of possible effer- 
vescence. Before asking him to this country I made many 
inquiries among his English friends respecting his temper, 
and I received very guarded answers, which awakened the 
alarm they were designed to allay. Nevertheless, the evi- 
dence of Sylvester's intellectual brilliancy and of his renown 
were so great that the possibility of discord seemed infini- 
tesimal in comparison with his merits; so he was called and 
so he came. 

Many good stories are afloat about the eccentricities of 
this professor — most of them exaggerated or twisted — but 



PROFESSOR SYLVESTER 67 

those which I shall tell came under my own observation. 
An apocryphal anecdote about his alarm because one leg 
had become shorter than the other, as he walked to the 
lecture-room one foot in the gutter, is a story that I had 
heard in Berlin, decades before, attributed to Neander. 
College traditions are full of such academic Joe Millerisms. 
Sylvester had a good deal of skill in versification, and had 
published a small volume, full of racy remarks and witty 
notes, on the " Laws of Verse," in the course of which he 
argued that imagination has much to do with the science of 
mathematics. In the appendix are some very good versions 
of classical and modern German poems. If his poetical 
fire had gone no farther, all would have been well; but 
he became possessed by a sort of monomania for rhyme, and 
soon after he came among us his friends were confidentially 
treated to a long series of lines, every one of which ended 
with a syllable pronounced both tnd and tnd* Rosalind was 
the theme. Some of the rhymes were forced to a ridiculous 
degree — Bowdoined, I remember; Bodind, he called it, the 
derivative of Bowdoin. This extraordinary composition, 
a veritable tour de force, reached four or five hundred verses, 
each closing with the three monotonous letters or their vocal 
equivalents. I do not know whether he ever gave away 
printed copies of this extraordinary production of his fer- 
tile brain, but he read his verses to many unwilling hearers, 
and I know that he kept the type standing for months at 
the printer's for additions and emendations. An early 
manuscript copy is in the archives of the University, and 
I will give a few lines from it — I am afraid to give 
more: 



68 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

To Rosalind 

(Key to the sentence of some hundreds of lines, all rhyming with ind) 

In Cecilia's name I find — 
(Deem not thou the guess unkind) — 
Celia, with a sigh combined,! 
Whose five letters, loose aligned, 
Magic set, and recombined, 
Fairest O! of lily kind, 
Shall disclose to every mind, 
From Far West to Orient Ind 
With each mortal thing unkinned, 
Thy sweet name, dear Rosalind! 

He certainly distributed a few printed copies of " Spring's 
Debut: a Town Idyll," more than 200 lines of nonsense 
verse, rhyming with in more remarkable for the appended 
notes than for any merit as a poem. 

Sylvester enjoyed stimulants — I do not mean such vul- 
gar and material articles as alcohol and coffee. I never 
saw any indications that he cared for their support. But 
he loved such stimulants to intellectual activity as music, 
and light, and lively society in which he was not called upon 
to participate. Once at a symphony concert I sat just be- 
hind him, admiring the dome of his capacious cranium, un- 
concealed by hair, and I noticed how absorbed he was. The 
next day, Sunday, he came to me impetuously to say that 
he had worked out some mathematical proposition at the 
concert of the evening before, the music having quickened 
his mathematical mind. He really thought this was his 
greatest achievement yet, and he had hastened to write it 
out and mail it to the Academy of Sciences in Paris. Once 
he told me that having a special paper to prepare, he went 
to a store and bought a pound of candles, which he placed 
about his room, on all sorts of extemporaneous candlesticks, 
" for light," he said, " is a most powerful tonic." He com- 
l Celia + ci = Cecilia. 



PROFESSOR SYLVESTER 69 

plained that the members of his club thought him dull, and 
the passers on the street thought him queer, when the truth 
was, as he told me, that the activity of others around him 
kept his brain active, and enabled him to carry on his own 
intellectual abstractions. Sometimes, however, he was very 
absent-minded. For example, he arrived from Philadelphia 
on a late train and walked bareheaded to his hotel. The 
next morning he demanded his hat, and insisted that it was 
in the house, and then he could not be persuaded that it 
was not stolen, until a telegram revealed the fact that the 
hat had travelled in the Pullman car to Washington. 

Once, in print, he speaks of one of his effusions as 
" evolved out of an improvised epigram which, as he wended 
his way home that morning, formed itself in the author's 
mind, intoxicated with the bright sun shining overhead, the 
balmy air, the song of the birds, and the new-come-out vir- 
gin spring just beginning to peep over Old Father Winter's 
reverend shoulder." 

Sylvester was a genius, with all the admirable qualities, 
and with many of the limitations and eccentricities of 
genius. He was often elated by the honours that were 
showered upon him by the men of science, and complimented 
by the deference and courtesy that came to him in society; 
but his mercury sometimes sank below zero. He could be 
irate, very much so, but his wrath was like " the crackling 
of thorns beneath a pot." For a moment it was furious, 
then the flame became extinct and the embers died. 

By recalling his oddities, I must not blind the reader to 
the extraordinary strength and fertility of Sylvester's mind. 
From every point of view he was a marvel — first and fore- 
most as a mathematician, as all the world has acknowledged ; 
then as a teacher of gifted scholars, not by any means a 
drill-master, but an inspirer ; then as a man of letters, loving 
English, French, German, Italian, Latin, and Greek liter- 
ature, carrying the Odyssey in Greek for his light reading 



70 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

at sea, and working for years to perfect his version of one of 
the odes of Horace, ad Mcecenatem (iii. 29). 

Among the American investigators of light and heat, Rum- 
ford the earliest, and Rowland the latest, about a century 
apart, are the most distinguished. Rumford founded a prize 
for the recognition of important contributions to those twin 
branches of physics, and very long afterward Rowland re- 
ceived that prize from the American Academy of Arts and 
Sciences. So their names are associated, but their studies 
bring their names into closer relations. Rumford died past 
sixty years of age; Rowland has just departed at the age of 
fifty-three, both cut off before their work was done, not 
before their fame was secure. For a quarter of a century 
Rowland had free scope in the University at Baltimore, and 
his freedom was justified by his achievements. He was a 
great man — great in talents, great in achievements, great m 
renown. So it was said at his funeral. He was one of those 
rare scholars who owe but little, if anything, to a mortal 
teacher. They learn their lessons in the school of nature. 
Investigation is their watchword, observation and experiment 
their instruments. The sun is one of their chief instructors ; 
the earth, another; the sea, the air, the ether, give knowledge 
to such minds. Of these lessons Rowland was never wearied. 
But he rebelled in his boyhood against the tasks of ordinary 
schools; he abhorred Latin and Greek; he would not go to 
college; he would not swear in the words of any master j 
conscious of his own accuracy in research and in calculation, 
he asked for no indorsement. When he entered his teens 
he began to make notes of hard problems in physics, and to 
begin their solution. While he was an obscure assistant in 
the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy he made some 
discoveries respecting the electrical discharge, and this paper 
gave him instantaneous celebrity. It led to his intimacy 
with Clerk Maxwell, to his call from the Johns Hopkins, to 
his winter in Helmholtz's laboratory, and to a noteworthy 



PROFESSOR ROWLAND 71 

investigation which was reported by Helmholtz to the Berlin 
Academy when its author was twenty-seven years old. 

As a part of his duties, Rowland was requested by the 
trustees to buy the requisite instruments for the physical lab- 
oratory. Everything was left to his discretion. Those were 
the days when the scientific lecture-rooms in America gloried 
in demonstrations of " the wonders " of nature — " the bright 
light, the loud noise, and the bad smell." Rowland would 
none of this. Instruments of precision he would have, and 
would have them in abundance, and of the best makers, no 
matter about the cost. So his laboratory was well equipped ; 
and when at Harvard, a few years later, Professor Wolcott 
Gibbs published a catalogue of the instruments of precision 
in this country available for research, Johns Hopkins led the 
column. 

From that time onward Rowland was conspicuous and his 
course was brilliant. The university secured temporary 
lodgement in two private dwelling-houses. " All I want," 
said Rowland, " is the back kitchen and a solid pier built 
up from the ground." As usual, he got what he wanted, 
though it must be said that his requests were not always so 
restrained. Something — I do not know what — turned his 
attention to the importance of redetermining the mechanical 
equivalent of heat, and he was encouraged by the American 
Academy of Arts and Sciences to undertake this enquiry. He 
devised his own method, made his own instrument, and 
worked out the results, which stand, I believe, as the nearest 
approach to absolute accuracy that has yet been attained 
by the eminent men who have attacked this fundamental 
problem. 

The subsequent career of Professor Rowland is now a part 
of the history of science in America, an important chapter 
in the science of light and heat. There is no reason why 
I should repeat the list of the honours that he has received, 
nor enumerate the investigations which he carried forward, 



72 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

nor the names of physicists in all parts of the country who 
acknowledged him as their illustrious teacher, for Dr. Men- 
denhall has made a critical estimate of his contributions to 
science and many other eulogies have been called out by his 
death. 

Yet perhaps a few more words of personal delineation may 
help to keep in mind his remarkable individuality. He was 
tall, slender, but not slim, well proportioned, alert, giving 
every indication of a healthy body. Of physical exercise he 
was very fond ; in winter the horse, in summer the sail-boat, 
gave him never-failing delight. He knew where to find 
the trout and how to handle the rod. He would take great 
risks in following the hounds. " You should think of the 
fox, and not of the ditch," I have heard him say when he 
was chided for his rash horsemanship. He landed once in 
Liverpool and saw an advertisement of a meet. He took 
a train to the nearest station, hired the best nag he could 
find, joined in the run, won the brush, and then disappeared 
from among his competitors, who hardly knew what to make 
of this unexpected victor. He designed a sail-boat, and be- 
fore it was launched he told the builders to paint the water- 
line where his calculations said that it should be. They 
objected; he persisted. The boat was launched, and the 
builders smiled when they saw that the line was above the 
water's edge. " Put in the mast," said Rowland, and the 
boat sank to the painted line. " That was what I had 
figured on," he exultingly said. The incident was closed. 

Rowland's enduring fame will rest partly on his deter- 
mination of the mechanical equivalent of heat, partly on 
his accurate ascertainment of the value of the ohm, and 
chiefly on his spectrum analysis. He contrived the dividing- 
engine, which could rule many thousand lines to the inch, 
and he made one of the most perfect, if not the most per- 
fect, screw that the world has ever seen, to guide the dia- 
mond needle which ruled the concave gratings. By the 



PROFESSOR ROWLAND 73 

agency of these gratings the solar spectrum is analysed. But 
Rowland did not stop here; he experimented in photog- 
raphy till he became a master of the art, and made a map 
of the solar spectrum, more explicit and more exact than 
any previous map. This is not the place, nor am I the 
person, to give a detailed account of this achievement, and 
of the wonderful discoveries to which it led in respect to 
the nature of light. 

Instead of making the attempt, I will give a few sentences 
which I do not remember that I ever showed to Rowland 
written to me in 1882 by a Harvard friend who went with 
Rowland to the Electrical Congress in Paris. This friend 
of ours was Professor John Trowbridge : 

" Rowland invited Mascart, Sir W. Thomson, Wiede- 
mann, Rossetti, and Kohlrausch to his room at the Hotel 
Continental in Paris, and showed them his photographs and 
gratings. It is needless to say that they were astonished. 
Mascart kept muttering ' Superbe' — ' Magnifique* The 
Germans spread their palms, looked as if they wished they 
had ventral fins and tails to express their sentiments. Sir 
W. Thomson evidently knew very little about the subject, 
and maintained a wholesome reticence, but looked his ad- 
miration, for he knows a good thing when he sees it, and 
also had the look that he could express himself upon the 
whole subject in fifteen minutes when he got back to 
Glasgow. 

" In England, Rowland's success was better appreciated, 
if possible, than in Paris. He read a paper before a very 
full meeting of the Physical Society — De la Rive, Profes- 
sor Dewar of Cambridge, Professor Clifton of Oxford, Pro- 
fessor Adams (of Leverrier fame), Professor Carey Fos- 
ter, Hilger the optician, Professor Guthrie, and other noted 
men being present. I was delighted to see his success. The 
English men of science were actually dumbfounded. Row- 
land spoke extremely well, for he was full of his subject, 



74 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

and his dry humour was much appreciated by his English 
audience. When he said that he ' could do as much in an 
hour as had hitherto been accomplished in three years,' there 
was a sigh of astonishment and then cries of ' Hear ! Hear ! ' 
Professor Dewar arose and said : ' We have heard from Pro- 
fessor Rowland that he can do as much in an hour as has been 
done hitherto in three years. I struggle with a very mixed 
feeling of elation and depression: elation for the wonderful 
gain to science; and depression for myself, for I have been 
at work for three years in mapping the ultra violet.' De la 
Rive asked how many lines to the inch could be ruled by 
Rowland. The latter replied: 'I have ruled 43,000 to 
the inch, and I can rule 1,000,000 to the inch, but 
what would be the use? No one would ever know 
that I had really done it.' Laughter greeted this sally. This 
young American was like the Yosemite, Niagara, Pullman 
palace car — far ahead of anything in England. Professor 
Clifton referred in glowing terms to the wonderful instru- 
ment that had been put into the hands of physicists, and 
spoke of the beautiful geometrical demonstrations of Row- 
land. Professor Dewar said that Johns Hopkins University 
had done great things for science, and that greater achieve- 
ments would be expected from it. Captain Abney wrote a 
letter which Rowland ought to show you, for, after having 
been read at the meeting, it was given to him. 

" The letter concluded with this characteristic anecdote : 
1 1 introduced Rowland to a fox-hunting gentleman, an old 
acquaintance of mine, and I imagine Rowland got enough 
of English fox-hunting, for, on my return from Birmingham, 
one evening, I found him stretched on the bed, a symphony 
in brown and red mud, his once glossy hat crushed into 
nothingness, his top-boots, once so new, a mass of Warwick- 
shire mud. He dryly remarked that he " guessed there 
wouldn't be any trouble about getting his hunting-suit 
through the custom-house now." He came very near break- 



LORD KELVIN 75 

ing his neck, having been thrown on his head before he 
" could calculate his orbit," as he remarked. I could not 
help shuddering from friendship and from love of science.' " 

One of the most extraordinary and renowned of the 
physicists of the nineteenth century lectured before the Johns 
Hopkins University in 1884. Years before, I had sought 
the counsel of Sir William Thomson, now Lord Kelvin, in 
Glasgow, where I found him in his laboratory surrounded 
by a dozen students watching, with the attention of a clinic, 
an experiment which he was making. It may have been 
the working of the syphon recorder — that ingenious device 
by which the feeble currents received from an ocean cable 
are reduced to curves, which are afterward translated into 
words — I am not sure, but I have treasured to this day a 
bit of the script which he then gave me. One day Professor 
Wolcott Gibbs suggested, to my surprise, that we should in- 
vite Lord Kelvin to lecture in Baltimore. We hardly thought 
it likely that he would accept our invitation, but, supported 
by one or more indorsements, it was favourably received by 
this eminent man, and he came. 

Long may it be before anyone shall write a memorial 
sketch of Lord Kelvin, but when it is written there must be 
a paragraph or a chapter about his visit to Johns Hopkins 
and his reception by the " coefficients," the company of math- 
ematicians to whom he gave his lectures upon light. The 
lectures went on from day to day upon the topics that oc- 
curred to the lecturer, or that were suggested by the ques- 
tions of his hearers. Everyone who was capable of following 
him was enchanted. " How long will these lectures con- 
tinue?" asked one of the auditors. "I do not know," re- 
plied Lord Rayleigh, who was one of the followers. " I 
suppose they will end some time, but I confess I see no rea- 
son why they should." 

Our celebrities were not always mathematical. Dean 
Stanley, for example, belonged to many schools, but not, so 



76 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

far as I have ever heard, to the school of mathematics. He 
came to Baltimore from Philadelphia under the escort of 
that generous and hospitable internationalist, Mr. George 
W. Childs. As he could only stay over night, I said to 
him, as he came into the railroad station : " What would 
you most like to see in Baltimore? We have a superb hos- 
pital," I began. " I cannot endure a hospital," was his quick 
interruption. " Dr. Harper, my young medical companion, 
might like to see that, but show me something historical." 
" Historical?" I enquired. " You come from Westminster 
Abbey to a town a century and a half old. Dear me, what 
would you call ' historical ' ? We have a Roman Catholic 
Cathedral, where a Provincial Council has been held, and 
it has some paintings given by a King of France. We have 
the Maryland Historical Society, with archives and pictures 
that interest local antiquaries. We have a University that 
has passed its second summer. And there are the Bonaparte 
portraits and mementoes." " Take me to see the Bona- 
partes," was his prompt reply. I explained to him that they 
were a private possession, and I must ask permission. While 
he was taking his afternoon cup of tea, the permission was 
readily and graciously given. The dean was delighted with 
what he saw. Every object, every portrait, interested him 
and drew forth some appropriate question or comment. I 
have a vivid remembrance of his kneeling before a group 
of miniatures which hung so low that even one of his stature 
could not readily see them standing. At dinner he was full 
of anecdotes and enquiries. Among other things, he told 
the famous Inveraw and Ticonderoga story, which was soon 
afterward printed in Frasers Magazine for October, 1878. 
At nine o'clock he was ready to meet the assembled officers 
and students in Hopkins Hall. Of course he was called on 
for a speech, and he said a few words, which were recalled, 
the next day, by Sir George Grove, a member of the party 
and a man of ready pen and editorial habits. The company 



DEAN STANLEY 77 

was naturally pleased by his historical allusions to Walter 
of Merton and Devorguilla of Balliol, for, although we did 
not know much about either of them, we projected our 
imaginations forward and wondered whether Hopkins of 
Baltimore would be as long remembered. These were Dean 
Stanley's words: 

" When I see an institution like this in its first beginnings, 
I am carried back to the time my own university in England 
was begun, perhaps a thousand years ago, in the fabulous 
obscurity of the age of Alfred, or the more recent historic 
times of Walter of Merton or Devorguilla of Balliol; and 
I observe the repetition of the same yearnings, after a dis- 
tant future of improvement, as those which were before the 
minds of those old mediaeval founders. The same spirit is 
needed for that improvement on this side of the ocean and 
on the other. I am led to think of the description given by 
Chaucer in that inestimable Prologue to the ' Canterbury 
Tales/ which I hope you will all read one day or other, of 
the Good Scholar and the Good Pastor, bred in Oxford in 
his time; and I see how, in spite of all the vast changes 
which have passed over the minds of men since that age, 
the same qualities are still necessary to make a good and sin- 
cere scholar, a good scientific student, an efficient medical or 
legal adviser, an efficient spiritual pastor. Simplicity, sin- 
cerity, love of goodness, and love of truth are as powerful 
and as much needed in our day as they were in the days long 
ago, which formed the great professions that are still the 
bulwarks of society." 

The remarks of Dean Stanley were appropriate — of course 
they were; he never said anything inappropriate — but his 
manner in meeting those who were presented to him was 
more remarkable. Each name set him thinking. " From 
what part of England did your forefathers come?" "Are 
you of the family?" " You surely are not of Eng- 
lish stock?" "Did your people emigrate to Virginia?" 



78 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

These and like questions, with the answers they elicited, 
put everyone at ease as he came up to greet him. His 
biographers have truly said that everywhere, in his Amer- 
ican visit, " he put himself on a level with the common- 
est person and without a touch of self -consciousness. 
His tact was unfailing, and it flowed from the desire and 
the power to throw himself into the feelings and circum- 
stances of others. ,, Many people have this desire — how few 
like Stanley have the ability as well as the wish! 

I notice one slight inaccuracy in their memoir, and that is 
so amusing that I must mention it. " Whether he spoke 
to the Congregationalist students of the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity, or to the Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and 
Episcopalians elsewhere, his audience felt that in each utter- 
ance the speaker was sincere in the effort to discover points 
of union sympathy." As the new foundation in Baltimore 
was non-denominational, and the president was the only Con- 
gregationalist on the governing boards — this wholesale 
classification of his colleagues, as Congregationalists, by an 
ecclesiastical historian, was gratifying, but unwarranted. 

Mr. James Russell Lowell, then Professor Lowell, and 
Professor Child spent the month of February, 1877, with 
us, and during a part of the same period Professor Charles 
E. Norton was lecturing at the Peabody Institute. They 
were revered as three wise men of the East. Lowell made 
but little preparation for his lectures, which were devoted to 
Romance poetry, with Dante as the central theme — I mean 
that he made but little special preparation for each discourse. 
He had with him the accumulated notes of a long-continued 
professorship, and I think he told me that he had read Dante 
forty times over. His manner was so captivating that he 
would have delighted his auditors if he had simply stated 
the most commonplace reflections on mediaeval poetry; but 
his literary sagacity, his humour, his learning, and his cita- 
tions charmed all who heard him, more, perhaps, than greater 



PROFESSORS LOWELL AND CHILD 79 

elaboration and more logical treatment would have done. 
In private, he was delightful. I treasure a vivid picture of 
his getting down on his knees so as to be of the same height 
as a little girl seven years old, and offering her his arm as he 
escorted her to the supper-table; and I know a lady who 
still counts as a valuable memento the offhand verses with 
which he acknowledged a bunch of roses received from her 
on his recovery from an attack of illness. 

At the commemoration exercises on Washington's Birth- 
day, Mr. Lowell read by request that part of his " Ode 
under the Old Elm" (Canto viii), in which a glowing 
tribute is paid to Virginia. In a letter to Miss Norton, the 
scene is thus described by the poet himself. After speaking 
of the address by Professor Gildersleeve on classical studies 
and that by Professor Sylvester on the study of mathematics, 
" both of them very good and just enough spicy with the 
personality of the speaker to be taking," he goes on to say: 
" Then I, by special request, read a part of my Cambridge 
Elm poem, and actually drew tears from the eyes of bitter 
Secessionists — comparable with those iron ones that rattled 
down Pluto's cheek. I didn't quite like to read the invoca- 
tion to Virginia here — I was willing enough three or four 
hundred miles north — but I think it did good. Teackle 
Wallis (Charles will tell you who he is), a prisoner of 
Fort Warren, came up to thank me with dry eyes (which 
he and others assured me had been flooded), and Judge 
Brown, with the testifying drops still on his lids." 

Lowell was a constant listener to Child, and he enjoyed 
the lectures as much as any of us. " You missed a great 
pleasure," he says to Professor Norton, " in not hearing him 
read the " Nonnes Prestes " tale. I certainly never heard any 
thing better. He wound into the meaning of it (as Dr. 
Johnson says of Burke) like a serpent, or perhaps I should 
come nearer to it if I said that he injected the veins of the 
poem with his own sympathetic humour till it seemed to 



80 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

live again. I could see his hearers take the fun before it 
came, their faces lighting with the reflection of his. I never 
saw anything better done. I wish I could inspire myself 
with his example, but I continue dejected and lumpish. . . . 
Child goes on winning all ears and hearts. I am rejoiced 
to have this chance of seeing so much of him, for though I 
loved him before, I did not know how lovable he was till 
this intimacy." There is another letter from " Bahltimer " 
to Miss Norton, from which I make a longer citation, chiefly 
for the sake of Child — partly for the sake of Baltimore hos- 
pitality. " Sylvester paid a charming compliment to Child, 
and so did Gildersleeve. The former said that Child had 
invented a new pleasure for them in his reading of Chaucer, 
and Gildersleeve that you almost saw the dimple of Chau- 
cer^ own smile as his reading felt out the humour of the 
verse. The house responded cordially. If I had much vanity 
I should be awfully cross, but I am happy to say that I have 
enjoyed dear Child's four-weeks' triumph (of which he alone 
is unconscious) , to the last laurel-leaf. He is such a delight- 
ful creature! I never saw so much of him before, and 
should be glad I came here if it were for nothing but my 
nearer knowledge and enjoyment of him. 

" We are overwhelmed with kindness here. I feel very 
much as an elderly oyster might who was suddenly whisked 
away into a polka by an electric eel. How I shall ever do 
for a consistent hermit again, heaven only knows. I eat five 
meals a day, as on board a Cunarder on the mid-ocean, and 
on the whole bear it pretty well, especially now that there 
are only four lectures left." 

Mr, Lowell engaged to come again a year later, and to 
take Don Quixote for his theme, but in the meantime Presi- 
dent Hayes selected him for the legation at Madrid, from 
which he was soon transferred to London. I met him in 
London as we were entering the gateway of the Fisheries 
Exhibition on " American Day." " I must make an opening 



PROFESSORS LOWELL AND CHILD 81 

speech," he said, " as the presiding officer, and I have no 
idea what to say." " Tell them the story of the American 
oyster," I replied. "What is that?" he asked. So I told 
him that our Baltimore biologist, Dr. Brooks, had discovered 
recently that the American oyster differs from the European 
oyster by beginning its career outside the parental shell. In 
the oyster world, as in the human world, young America is 
eager to begin life on his own account, without parental su- 
pervision. Pretty soon I heard Mr. Lowell tell the story in 
his agreeable way, and it was correctly given in the report 
of his speech. 

Professor Child was the most companionable and lovable 
of visitors. He had not been accustomed to the lecture plat- 
form, and was evidently both surprised and delighted by the 
reception given him. His theme was Chaucer. It was be- 
fore the day of Lounsbury's masterly volumes, and Child's 
narrative of Chaucer's life, his pictures of Chaucer's time, his 
exposition of Chaucer's language, and his Chaucerian pronun- 
ciation of passages from the " Canterbury Tales " were a fresh 
contribution to English literature. Everybody who owned a 
Chaucer brought it to the lecture-room, and those who owned 
no copy betook themselves to the book-stores. The local 
supply was soon exhausted, the libraries were despoiled, and 
for days there was " a corner " in Chaucers such as history 
has never before recorded, and never will again. In the 
second year Child read us old ballads, in different versions 
and texts. This was part of his opus magnum— learned, 
exhaustingly so — but not nearly as acceptable to his auditors 
as his Chaucerian discourses. I think he may have been 
conscious of this, for he volunteered some extra appointments, 
in which he read Shakespeare with almost as much skill as, 
in later days, Horace Howard Furness. The memory of 
Professor Child is still a cherished possession. I have many 
letters from him, almost all of them full of messages to or en- 
quiries after those whose acquaintance he made on those two 



82 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

memorable visits. All these memories have been recently 
revived by the gift of a medallion likeness of Child by Miss 
Upshur, of Boston. When Dr. Kelley made us this present, 
we held a meeting to commemorate the lectures of early years, 
and to dwell upon the rare attainments of Professor Child, 
as a scholar, his rarer virtues as a friend. 

Mr. Edward A. Freeman, the historian, would have been 
better appreciated by the Americans whom he addressed, if 
they had understood his tenses and moods, or, in other words, 
if they had mastered his mode of speech. It has often seemed 
to me that scholars, certainly those who dwell within college 
walls or live secluded lives, have each of them his own 
" lingo." By this I mean that each has his characteristic use of 
words, and if you would quickly apprehend his meaning you 
will do well to observe his habitual diction. A word of 
praise, even a laudatory tone, means more from some men 
than a paragraph of eulogy from others. So likewise with 
criticism and censure. Now the minute exactness which is 
apparent in Freeman's writings, and is one of his great merits, 
governed his familiar correspondence and conversation. For 
example, his letters from America give many allusions to the 
epithets by which he was accosted. He is offended, or pre- 
tends to be so, because they call him " Professor " and 
" Doctor." " Once," he says, " I was called ' Colonel/ " 
He declined to speak at the University because he was under 
engagements to give lectures at the Peabody Institute. If 
he would not " lecture," I asked him to give some familiar 
talks to the students. " Familiar talks? " he said ironically. 
He seemed to be as much surprised as if I had asked him for 
nursery tales. " Well, conferences," I suggested. " Do you 
mean that the students are to do a part of the talking and I 
a part ? " was his next inquiry. I forget how we got round 
the difficulty, but I believe that the term " informal lectures " 
suited him. At any rate he spoke, and made many friends 
among us. " There are not so many swells here at Balti- 



EDWARD A. FREEMAN 83 

more as at the ' Hub of the Universe/ but we have made some 
pleasant acquaintances here — judges, professors, and others. 
Johns Hopkins, his University, seems to be doing very good 
work " — so wrote the historian from Baltimore, November 
25, 1 88 1. He took a great liking to Professor Herbert B. 
Adams, to whom he alluded in phrases of just praise, in his 
books on America; and Adams took a great liking to Free- 
man, of which there is a lasting memorial. Over the lec- 
turer's desk in the historical room were words of Freeman 
which appealed strongly to Dr. Adams, " History is past 
politics, and politics present history " — the motto, likewise, of 
Adams's series of historical studies. " Mr. Freeman, where 
did you write your great work on the Norman Conquest? " 
asked a modest student, expecting as an answer, no doubt, 
" the British Museum " or the " Bodleian." " In my own 
library. Where did you suppose?" came the gruff reply. 
I have been credibly informed that when conversation lagged 
at a dinner-table the great historian was known to nod. If 
this was so, it is not a solitary instance of the soporific ten- 
dency of advancing years. 

Professor Bryce, as it happened, was in Baltimore at the 
same time, and the two men rendered a great service to the 
State of Maryland by urging the Legislature to make a 
liberal appropriation for printing the colonial, or more 
strictly, the provincial, records of that remarkable, in some 
particulars that unique, Commonwealth. Freeman's name 
is still held in personal reverence among our men of that day. 
A few years after his visit, in spending a Sunday at Trinity 
College, Oxford, I found him robed, sitting in a stall, as an 
Honourary Fellow, at early morning prayers. Then and 
later he was full of courtesies and kindness. 

As we went into the dining-hall on " Gaudy day," my es- 
cort pointed to a portrait on the wall, and said : " That is 
your great enemy, Lord North ; " and when I repeated the re- 
mark a few minutes later to Freeman, " Yes," he said, indi- 



84 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

eating another portrait, " and that is your great friend, Lord 
Chatham." He was not at his ease in Oxford, especially not 
in a professor's chair. " It is all so disappointing and dis- 
heartening " — these are his words. " I have tried every kind 
of lecture I can think of, and put my best strength into all, 
but nobody comes! " This was pitiful, indeed. I think the 
fault must have been in the system, not in the man. Cer- 
tainly such students as listened to him in Baltimore would 
have been delighted to follow the master for a year through 
the mazes of historical research. They might not have cared 
for didactic lectures, crowded with detail, but they could 
not have failed to watch closely the methods followed by a 
great investigator, his ways of finding out, his habits of veri- 
fication. After all, a great teacher is not to be measured 
by his learning only ; it is rather by his example. 

Although I am not one of those who knew Freeman best, 
I would echo the words of Professor Bonney, who thus wrote 
of him: " He always reminded me of a lion, and had he 
roared when roused it would have seemed quite natural. 
Some men complained that, like the king of beasts, he was 
apt to rend those who crossed his path. I can only speak 
of him as I found him — one of the kindest of friends, most 
tolerant of my ignorance, and ever ready to open to me his 
stores of knowledge. ,, 

One word more let me add. Freeman's correspondence is 
racy in a high degree; everybody should know it. To ap- 
preciate the extraordinary acquisitions, industry, and versa- 
tility of this historian, it is only necessary to glance at a full 
and well-arranged list of his principal writings from 1846 to 
1892, which is given at the end of his Memoirs. 

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. In the 
conduct of a university, secure the ablest men as professors, 
regardless of all other qualifications excepting those of per- 
sonal merit and adaptation to the chairs that are to be filled. 



PROFESSOR FREEMAN 85 

Borrow if you cannot enlist. Give them freedom, give them 
auxiliaries, give them liberal support. Encourage them to 
come before the world of science and of letters with their pub- 
lications. Bright students, soon to be men of distinction, 
will be their loyal followers, and the world will sing a loud 
Amen. 



INCIDENTS OF THE EARLY YEARS 



VI 

INCIDENTS OF THE EARLY YEARS 

" The life within college walls," of which the college 
songsters of my day used to sing, is, in general, free from ex- 
citements, at least from any excitements that are of interest 
to the non-participants. I am not speaking of undergradu- 
ates, who have athletics, fraternities and politics, but of 
teachers and advanced students whose days are monotonous, 
passed in quiet, hidden, often solitary devotion to study. New 
books, instruments, and periodicals give flavour to their pur- 
suits and evoke new ideas. This is the excitement that the 
scholar loves. To the public his occupations are not only 
forbidden — they seem dry and fruitless, certainly imbued 
with incomprehensible dulness ; for while the world welcomes 
the results, it cares no more for the processes of study 
and investigation than children care for the receipts of 
the pastry-book. When a scholar interprets the history 
of the Chaldaean Deluge, written upon a tablet of clay 
and long buried in Mesopotamia, a new chapter is opened 
to the reader of the Book of Genesis — but it is more than 
probable that the general reader knows little of the century 
of cuneiform scholarship from Grotefend to Haupt, by which 
this extraordinary story has been made intelligible. It is 
just the same in every branch of study: conclusions are wel- 
comed, especially in the form of benefits; processes are for- 
gotten. Yet dull as the life of a scholar appears to the out- 
side world, it is often varied by incidents that are entertaining 
and inspiring. Some such occurrences I propose to narrate. 
Of late years, international comity has led to academic 
celebrations of an international character. They are osten- 
sibly intercollegiate, but they are in reality of broader scope. 

89 



go THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

Within the last five-and-twenty years Bologna, Padua, 
Heidelberg, Glasgow, Cracow, Montpellier, Edinburgh, and 
Dublin, among European universities; Harvard, Yale, 
Columbia, Princeton, Williams, St. John's, Chapel Hill, 
Bowdoin, and Union, among American institutions, have in- 
vited the world of science and letters to be represented at 
celebrations, centennial, sesquicentennial, bicentennial, ter- 
centennial, and even quinquennial and sextennial. The cere- 
monies on these occasions are among the most pleasant as well 
as the most brilliant events in academic life. Faculties and 
students, with the dignitaries of civil and ecclesiastical sta- 
tions, take part in jubilees prolonged through several days. 
Ordinary commencements, commemorations, and convoca- 
tions are cast into the shade. 

The latest, and to me, for many reasons, the most memor- 
able of the academic festivals that I have attended, is that 
which commemorated the 200th anniversary of the foundation 
of Yale College, when the President of the United States, 
the Chief Justice, the Secretary of State, two foreign ambas- 
sadors, a representative of the King of Sweden, the Premier 
of Japan, an eminent jurist from St. Petersburg, a renowned 
surgeon from Berlin, a Roman Catholic archbishop, a bishop 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church, scores of college presi- 
dents and professors, dozens of men of letters and represen- 
tatives of science, with other dignitaries not a few, came to- 
gether to offer their congratulations and praises to the Puri- 
tan college. A thoughtful observer, in the midst of all this 
splendid array, might have said that the vestiges of Puritanism 
were passing away, twenty-six decades after John Davenport 
preached his first sermon in the wilderness near the spot 
where we were assembled. Were we in fact proclaiming the 
passing of Puritanism? 

The culmination of these brilliant festivities came on the 
last day, when an original Greek ode was sung to original 
music, and the President of the United States, having re- 



MONTPELLIER, DUBLIN, AND CRACOW 91 

ceived the hood of a Doctor of Laws, stepped forward on the 
platform to congratulate the university and its guests. There 
were two other remarkable incidents. One evening the 
graduates and undergraduates, thousands of them, marched 
under the elms, with torches, banners, mottoes, and music — 
a most impressive throng; and another evening, in the open 
air, beneath a brilliant star-lit sky, in the presence of several 
thousands of men and women, memorable events in the his- 
tory of Yale were presented in dramatic tableaux, and in the 
interludes the welkin rang with college songs. 

I have seen nothing abroad that was finer in the way of 
academic rejoicings than these Yalensian, but it must be ad- 
mitted that there are fewer black gowns, more bright-coloured 
robes, in the European gatherings than in ours ; so the foreign 
shows are more striking. At Montpellier I was startled to 
find that the American delegation, following alphabetical 
precedence, came to the front of the procession, just after 
Allemagne, represented by Helmholtz, and the plain black 
clothes that I wore seemed out of place. I ought to have 
worn a gown and I ought to have presented a diploma. 

In Dublin, as a speaker for the United States, I made an 
explicit and pointed reference to the great philosopher from 
Trinity College, who gave away land and books for the bene- 
fit of American colleges, and who died the Bishop of Cloyne, 
not far from Cork. These were the delegate's words: 
" One alumnus of Trinity College is beloved beyond all 
others by Americans. I need not even pronounce his name. 
Some of us have been at his see in Cloyne; we have looked 
upon his ideal form cut in marble so full of life and beauty 
that we felt his presence, and uttered face to face our words 
of gratitude and honour." " Name him," cried the under- 
graduates, in a distant gallery, chaffing the speaker. " Who 
was he? Who was he?" was their vociferous shout. " It 
would not be necessary," I replied to them when they paused, 
1 in an American college, under conditions like these, to 



92 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

pronounce the name of that eminent graduate of Dublin, 
George Berkeley." The jeers became cheers, and the boys 
gave generous applause to the name of the illustrious bishop 
whom they did not recognise as a benefactor of Yale and Har- 
vard. I recall another incident. After Henry Irving had 
received an honorary degree and the company was leaving 
the aula, the students, neglecting the other famous men, took 
the actor upon their shoulders and bore him to a neighbouring 
portico, where he made a graceful acknowledgment of their 
rude but hearty and well-meant courtesy. It was a strik- 
ing illustration of the readiness of human nature to applaud 
those who have given us pleasure and to pass unnoticed those 
who have given us knowledge. 

In Cracow, the ancient capital of Poland, there was a noble 
commemoration of Polish education, literature, science, and 
art. The city was brilliant with colours, the procession was 
dignified, and the reception of delegates by the noble rector, 
Count Tarnowski, in the church, from which the sacred para- 
phernalia had been removed, was most impressive. As a 
representative of American colleges, I did not fail to mention 
Kosciusko, the friend of Washington, the upholder of Ameri- 
can independence, whose lofty cairn looks down upon the city 
of Cracow, and the allusion was well received; but when 
the speaker proceeded to speak of Sienkiewicz, the great 
writer, whose works were read and admired in lands across 
the seas, the house burst forth in applause which brought to 
his feet the illustrious author of " Pan Michel " and " Quo 
Vadis," who had been sitting just in front of the platform. 
When the honorary degrees were announced it was with 
great pleasure that I heard among them the name of the 
American astronomer, Simon Newcomb. On another day, 
a statue of the illustrious Copernicus was unveiled in the 
middle of the beautiful quadrangle which he trod as an un- 
dergraduate 400 years before. Remembered as a student 
for four centuries! 



NON-RESIDENT LECTURERS 93 

Such entertainments produce a strong impression on those 
who take part in them, and on other intelligent observers, 
for in a very striking manner these gatherings show the 
brotherhood of man and the co-operation of scholars in the 
advancement of knowledge. That intercourse by epistles, of 
which we have voluminous records in the correspondence of 
Erasmus, of Leibnitz, and many others; that careful making 
notes of personalities, such as we see in the diary of Dr. Stiles, 
recently printed, have given way to the well-edited periodicals 
which nowadays embody the notes and progress in every 
branch of learning. Modern ingenuity and necessities have 
also devised innumerable societies, associations, and acad- 
emies which hold frequent meetings for those engaged in 
similar pursuits, but these are usually restricted to the citi- 
zens of one country, and to those who are bound by the ties 
of specialisation. In order to bring together scholars of many 
lands and of all departments, literary and scientific, the rep- 
resentatives of law, medicine, theology and philosophy, great 
ceremonials are requisite, and the universities have naturally 
become the places for them. Everyone who has participated 
in the jubilee of a venerable seat of learning will surely carry 
with him, as long as he lives, the memory of the faces, the 
speeches, the greetings of those whom he met, nor will he fail 
to remember the unity of knowledge, its boundless extent, 
the importance of combined efforts for its advancement, and 
likewise the inanity of rivalry, the pettiness of jealousy, and 
the joyfulness of association for the good of mankind. 

There are lesser festivals which also leave delightful 
memories; and some which I recall stand out in the vista of 
the past like beacons on a quiet sea-shore. For example, long 
after the first sorrow that is felt when a man of mark has de- 
parted, a commemorative meeting has become a time of 
rejoicing that such a man has lived and that we have been 
permitted to come under his inspiring influence. Fifty years 
after the birth of Robert Louis Stevenson we commemorated, 



94 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

in Baltimore, his life and works. Special students of Eng- 
lish literature wrote short and appreciative essays; portraits 
and letters, and examples of his " copy " were brought to us 
by one of his friends, Mr. E. L. Burlingame, the editor of 
Scribners Magazine; various editions of his books were ex- 
hibited, and a select company of his readers, who met for this 
commemoration, felt as if they had been personally intro- 
duced to the great romancer from the land of Scott. A simi- 
lar commemoration brought Professor Francis J. Child to 
mind. 

But the most noteworthy of such events was one that at- 
tracted many people from a distance and elicited from others 
who could not come, their words of appreciation. Sidney 
Lanier, like a brilliant comet, appeared on our horizon in 
centennial year, when his ode, written for the opening of the 
Philadelphia Exhibition, drew forth the cool criticisms of 
widely scattered readers (who did not appreciate his purpose 
in the composition), and almost simultaneously, enthusiastic 
plaudits from thousands of auditors who heard the rendering 
of the words to the stirring music of Dudley Buck. Lanier 
was then living in Baltimore, known to many as a player 
upon the flute in the concerts of the Peabody Conservatory, 
and, to a few of the most cultivated, as a writer of verse, as a 
student of English literature, and as a gifted critic. It was 
natural that he should be invited to lecture before the uni- 
versity, and an invitation to do so he gladly accepted. The 
summons reached him in a period of great despondency and 
physical distress. He was exhilarated by the opportunity 
and did his best — and his best was very good — to inspire 
and instruct those who came within the sound of his 
voice. 

In the second of the two courses it was obvious that the 
hand of Death had touched his shoulder, and the unwelcome 
presence of the inevitable was perceptible as the lecturer tot- 
tered up to his desk and delivered his message, with cheer, 



SIDNEY LANIER 95 

sitting resolute and buoyant as if he were to drink " a stirrup 
cup." When he died, we paid to his memory the tributes of 
grief and affection, but it was not the time for an apprecia- 
tion of his poetry. That came later. 

Seven years after his death a company of his friends came 
together in another mood — less mournful because there had 
been time to review his life and writings, to trace his in- 
fluence upon those whom he had taught, and to estimate his 
rank among American poets. We could now be assured 
that though the pen had fallen from his hand and the flute 
no longer responded to his inspiration, yet the melody of his 
voice was still resonant, and the memory of his brave life 
was beginning to " smell sweet and blossom in the dust." 

The immediate occasion for such an assembly was the gift 
of a bronze bust of Lanier, modelled, late in his life, by 
a sculptor of Baltimore, Ephraim Keyser. It is a striking 
portrait which arrests the attention of every passer-by, by its 
union of reality and ideality. One day as we stood beside the 
pedestal I said to a German pathologist who had never heard 
of Lanier, " He was a poet greatly beloved and greatly 
mourned by us." " Hm," was his response, " tuberculosis." 
I called the attention of another visitor, who knew some- 
thing of Lanier, to the same portrait. ;< Yes," he said, 
" Christ-like." 

To our memorial meeting Lowell wrote of Lanier as a 
man of genius with a rare gift for the happy word ; Stedman 
said of him that he had " conceived of a method, and of com- 
positions, which could only be achieved by the effort of a life 
extended to man's full term of years; the little that he was 
able to do belonged to the very outset of a large synthetic 
work " ; Gilder spoke of the recent deaths of Emma Lazarus, 
Sill, and Helen Jackson, followed by Lanier's premature de- 
parture, and added : " Every now and then there crystallised 
in his intense and musical mind a lyric of such diamond-like 
strength and lustre that it can no more be lost from the 



96 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

diadem of English song than can the lyrics of Sidney or oi 
Herbert " ; Father Tabb, kindred spirit, friend tried in ad- 
versity, read a memorial sonnet ; other verses came from Mrs. 
Turnbull, and from Burton and Cummings, who had been 
Lanier's pupils; and Miss Edith M. Thomas, thinking of a 
line of Lanier's, " On the Paradise Side of the River of 
Death," wrote these lines which I copy from her autograph, 
a greatly valued memento : 

The River flows, how softly flows 

(The one bank green, the other sere), 
How sweet the wind that hither blows. 

Its breath is from the blightless rose. 

Its voice, from lips of leal and dear — 
The River flows, how softly flows. 

Beyond, in dreams the spirit goes, 

And finds each lost and lovely peer- 
How sweet the wind that hither blows. 

Brief while the gleaming vista shows 

A singing throng withdraws from here — 
The River flows, how softly flows. 

There mounts the winged song, there glows 

The ardour white, of rare Lanier — 
How sweet the wind that hither blows. 

His voice rang fearless to the close, 

He sang Death's Cup with cordial cheer — 
The River flows, how softly flows: 
How sweet the wind that hither blows. 

It is delightful to observe the growing reputation of the 
gifted Lanier, and the increasing demand for all that he has 
written. Few men of letters in our land have left a more 
pathetic or a more inspiring record. Nothing could quench 
the poetic fire that burned within him. The res angusta 
domi, war, confinement in a military prison, continued ill- 
health, the necessity of providing support for a large family, 



SIDNEY LANIER 97 

the removal of his home from place to place, difficulty after 
difficulty never broke him down. 

Always cheerful, always gallant, always trustful — his pres- 
ence in any company was quickening and inspiring. Let him 
enter a horse-car, and everyone was conscious that there was 
a man of mark; let him come upon the stage in a concert- 
room, a buzz would go through the audience ; let him lecture, 
it was clear that he was one who would uphold the loftiest 
ideals. It is but slight praise to add that his name is cherished 
in Baltimore as a priceless heritage. The memoir by Professor 
Edwin Mims, of Trinity College, North Carolina, admir- 
ably portrays the rare character of Lanier. 

Sacred memories and sad will always linger in the prin- 
cipal hall of our physical laboratory, for there we commemo- 
rated Rowland after we had placed his ashes (according to 
his request) in a vault very near to the famous dividing en- 
gine, to which he gave so much of his time and thought. Nor 
is this our only mournful association with that place. Here 
it was that Phillips Brooks, a short time before he died, met 
the students one October afternoon, and made one of the last, 
one of the best, one of the most effective of his religious dis- 
courses. As he spoke, animated by an audience that he had 
never met before, made up exclusively of students and their 
teachers, not a few of the listeners were impressed by the al- 
most unearthly looks and tone with which his uplifting 
message was delivered. Not long afterward his voice was 
silenced forever, and then the fragmentary notes of this dis- 
course, taken down at the moment, or recalled to memory, 
were transcribed and printed. 

Three great international jurists have been commemorated 
in Baltimore — Bluntschli of Heidelberg, Lieber of New 
York, and Laboulaye of Paris. In view of their intimate re- 
lations and close concord, somebody (I believe it was Lieber) 
called them an " international clover-leaf." This might 
pass muster as a metaphor, but when photographs of the three 



98 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

faces were pasted upon a huge trifolium the metaphot 
vanished and the reality was more amusing than artistic. 
Professor Adams had been the pupil of Bluntschli, and on 
the death of his master was eager to secure his library. The 
German citizens of Baltimore responded instantly to his wish, 
and contributed the purchase-money, and when the books 
came we had a Bluntschli celebration. With his books came 
his manuscripts ; and this led Mrs. Lieber to send to us those 
of her husband ; and, later, the sons of Laboulaye sent us in- 
teresting examples of his handwriting. The portraits of 
these three men look down upon the cabinet which contains 
their works, exerting a silent and unconscious influence upon 
the students of public law. 

One day as I was walking down our thoroughfare, North 
Charles Street, I met Mr. Innes Randolph, of local dis- 
tinction as a man of versatile talents. " See here," said he tak- 
ing the wrapper off of a number of marble fragments, " this 
is an original bust of Chief Justice Marshall. I am going 
to put the pieces together and take a plaster cast of them. If 
I succeed, you shall have a copy." Not long afterward he 
brought me a fine cast of this admirable likeness of the great 
jurist. The original was the work of Houdon, and the copy 
preserved the exquisite chiselling and the fine expression of the 
marble. I showed the cast to the American sculptor, Mr. 
William W. Story, when he was about to make his statue of 
Marshall for Washington. He was delighted and told me 
that he had seen no likeness of the jurist so satisfactory as this. 
The gift of Mr. Randolph suggested that we should have a 
commemoration of Marshall, so we invited his successor in 
office, Chief Justice Waite, to come and make a presentation 
address, which he kindly consented to do. A plaster cast at 
best is fragile, but by the generosity of a lady we have been so 
fortunate as to have this one reproduced in bronze, by an 
artist in Paris, and a copy of it is awarded every year to a 
graduate student who shall have produced some noteworthy 



HAUPT'S CUNEIFORM LETTER 99 

and meritorious contribution to historical and political 
science. Copies of the replica have often been asked for, but 
none can be obtained except in the regular way by which 
Woodrow Wilson, Albert Shaw, and others have gained the 
prize. 

Certainly the rarest, perhaps the most remarkable testi- 
monial ever given to a college president in modern times was 
given to me. It was a unique diploma, and these are the 
circumstances under which it came: I met my colleague, 
Professor Paul Haupt, casually at the Murray Hill Hotel, in 
New York, and mentioned that it was twenty-five years that 
very day, December 30, 1899, since I was called from Cali- 
fornia to Baltimore. We parted and took different trains 
homeward. Early the next day there was left at my door a 
letter in cuneiform script, which Dr. Haupt had composed 
upon the way home, and lest I should be rusty in the language 
of Nineveh and Babylon a translation came, too. A little 
later I received a copy of the same letter, cut in wedge- 
shaped characters upon a red clay tablet and baked, so that 
its aspect was exactly that of the letters exhumed in recent 
years on the sites of ancient Assyrian cities. The language 
has not a little of the hyperbole which is common in the 
flowery phrases of the Orientals, so I shall not venture to 
quote from it more than the opening and closing lines. In a 
parallel column the reader may read, if he chooses, a translit- 
eration, in Roman characters, of the wedge-shaped characters, 
of the original letter: 

To the great chief, Ana asaridi rabi 

Dani 'ilu the son of Gilmanu Dani '111 mar Gilmani 

thy servant Pa'ulu the son of arduka Pa'ulu mar Xa 'upti. 
Ha'uptu : 

A hearty, hearty greeting to my Lu sulmu ana beli 'a adannij 

lord ! addannis" ! 

On the auspicious day when 25 Ina umi mitgari $a ultu XXV 

years ago sanati 



ioo THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

thou wast chosen tannamiru atta 

to the Presidency of the great ana asariduti sa bit raurarau 

school , rabi 

the house of teaching and in- bit sudi u sulmudi 

struction, 

the seat of the Lord of Inscrut- subat Bel nimeqi 

able Wisdom, 

established in the Monumental sa ina al Calmani uktinuni 

City— 



Thou hast erected a monument 
above all monuments of the 
Monumental City. 

The splendor of thy name is 
established forever. 

Written upon the swift cars 

of the road of iron, 
between the City of Brotherly 

Love and the Monumental 

City, 
on the 30th day of the 12th 

month of the year of our Lord 

1899 



calmu tazqup 
eli calmani kalisunu 
la. al Calmani 

melamme sumika ana balat ume 
ruquti taltakan. 

Sa^ir ina eli rukube xitmututi 
sa sulli barzilli 

ina berit al Naram-axuti u al 
Calmani 

ina um XXX sa arax XII satti 
Belini MDCCCXCIX. 



I shall never forget a certain illustration of the narrow 
margin between the sublime and the ridiculous. Professor 
Royce, of Harvard College, came to repeat in Baltimore a 
very serious philosophical essay which he had read at Har- 
vard, and which was strongly commended to us by Dr. An- 
drew P. Peabody. I will not state his exact line of thought, 
but after he had been speaking for nearly half an hour in a 
room that was crowded and, I must add, not well ventilated, 
he paused, having left a solemn impression on the minds of 
his audience respecting a fundamental truth. As we were 
sitting there silent, thoughtful, and expectant, a voice came 
from the middle of the hall, and one of the auditors said, 
with emphasis : " Let us hear the other side of that ques- 
tion." We looked around to discover the speaker, and those 



READY WIT OF MR. WALLIS 101 

of us who were in front recognised a distinguished judge of 
the Federal Court. None of us could tell what he meant by 
this abrupt and judicial utterance. The interruption was 
brief and the lecture went on as it began. I had hardly- 
reached home when a note came to me from the judge to 
this effect: " I must apologise for that extraordinary inter- 
ruption. The truth is that the room was warm, I had just 
dined, the lecture was serious, and I dropped asleep. When 
the lecturer ceased to speak, I suddenly awoke, and, thinking 
I was on the bench, called out, ' Let us hear the other side 
of that question.' " 

When the Johns Hopkins University began its work all 
the members were lonesome. The faculty was small, the 
students few, the graduates none. A good many squibs were 
fired at us in the newspapers. We came from distant parts 
of the country and from abroad, we were educated by 
different methods, we were not quite sure of one another. 
We were to be welded into a compact body. But weld- 
ing requires heat, and, after the novelty wore off, our en- 
thusiasm was lessened, and we began to long for the warmth 
of sympathy. To promote good-fellowship a suggestion was 
made that all college graduates living in Baltimore should 
be invited to meet together and dine. The idea found favour, 
and on Washington's Birthday a large company of educated 
men, having listened to the public exercises of the morning, 
assembled for a social hour around a well-spread table in the 
Academy of Music. By common consent Mr. Teackle 
Wallis, most brilliant among the leaders of the bar, a man 
of wit and eloquence, of fire and grace, was invited to pre- 
side, and he did so with spirit and tact. Presently he pro- 
posed the sentiment, " The Universities of Great Britain/' 
and he called upon Professor Sylvester to respond. The 
famous mathematician rose, uttered a few half-audible com- 
monplaces, halted, searched his vest-pocket in vain for notes, 
and sat down, saying, as he did so: "I ought to have pre- 



102 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

pared myself for this occasion, but instead I went to the 
opera last evening, for I could not miss the opportunity of 
hearing Gerster; so I beg to be excused." It is needless to 
say that the audience, who expected from him something un- 
usual, did not expect this sort of a surprise. Quick as a 
flash, the presiding officer, Mr. Wallis, was on his feet, 
smiling at the discomfited professor and saying, " I hope that 
will always be the motto of the Johns Hopkins University — 
Opera non Verba/' 

I have heard travellers say that the pleasantest part of 
travel is the coming home. I have sometimes thought so, and 
I have also thought that the pleasantest part of life is its 
closing chapter, when memories take the place of hopes, 
cares are lessened, opportunities are enlarged, and friend- 
ships multiplied and intensified. If I were to follow the 
example of Lecky, and draw the " Map of Life " with such 
cartographical knowledge as has come to me, I should mark 
the age of seventy as the Cape of Good Hope, and for the 
cheer of those who are doubling this cape I should show that 
it leads to a Pacific sea within whose bounds lie the For- 
tunate Isles. 

It is certainly a great delight to look far back upon under- 
graduate days, to follow the careers of classmates and friends, 
to recall the preferment of colleagues and associates, and it 
is beyond all other academic pleasures to see how large a 
proportion of former pupils have risen to distinction and 
usefulness in the various walks of life. When I go back to 
New Haven and find that " old Yale," if that means the 
group of buildings, has completely changed from brick to 
stone ; and if " old Yale " means the faculty, that all my 
teachers lie in the Campo Santo while their successors are 
turning grey, a moment's sadness comes over me, but it soon 
gives way to grateful remembrance, and the regrets that are 
inevitable lead up to the satisfaction that though the body 
has perished, the spirit of " old Yale " is still alive and pres- 



UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 103 

ent. How it is possible for anyone to be a pessimist when 
such progress is studied, I cannot understand. 

California, in a different way from that of Connecticut, 
affords striking examples of the educational advances of the 
last few years. The men who crossed the isthmus and went 
around the cape when gold was discovered, have lived to see 
the day when two strong universities, the one fostered by the 
State, and the other endowed by private munificence, are at- 
tended by thousands of students, who have access to the very 
best books and instruments, and are taught by teachers whose 
reputation for learning and talents is everywhere acknowl- 
edged. 

I went back to Berkeley, twenty-five years after I had 
seen the infant university transferred from Oakland to its 
new and permanent home, directly in face of the Golden 
Gate. On a bright afternoon in autumn thousands of peo- 
ple were assembled upon the campus in the open air to wel- 
come Dr. Benjamin I. Wheeler, just entering upon his ca- 
reer as president of the University of California, and to hear 
his inaugural address. Dr. Jordan, already wonted to the 
cares of the Stanford University, was there to give a right 
hand of fellowship, and I had been brought from the East to 
show the connection between the present and the past. 
Around us were a score of academic buildings. Pleasant 
houses lined the streets, which bore the names of Dwight 
and Bushnell and other Eastern worthies. In the distance 
we could look out of the Golden Gate to the Pacific Ocean. 

I will not endeavour to show how much history was here 
brought to mind, from the days when Sir Francis Drake 
sailed along this coast, to the time when Alaska was bought, 
the Sandwich Islands annexed, and the more distant Philip- 
pines brought under our sway. But the nearer lessons were 
likewise vivid. It was hardly sixty years since a Yale geol- 
ogist, exploring the coast, had descried the signs of gold ; it 
was half a century since the auri sacra fames had brought to 



104 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

the Pacific Slope the strong men of the Eastern States, ready 
to supplant the institutions of Spain with those of the United 
States. Among them were those who were determined that, 
like Massachusetts and Connecticut, California should begin 
its new era with a college crowning the system of education. 
Some of these pioneers were still living. In the middle of 
the campus we stood upon the rock where the name of 
Berkeley was proposed as the name of the university site, a 
rock upon which have been cut the prophetic words, " West- 
ward the course of empire takes its way." Yet the best 
sight of all was the throng of well-educated men and women 
here assembled, imbued with the love of knowledge, trained 
for the highest service of the church and state, by agencies 
introduced only fifty years ago. The scene was a tableau 
displaying the growth of an idea. The knowledge of such 
progress should be assuring to those in our Southern States 
who are now beginning new movements for the advancement 
of public education. 

As I thus consider the last few years, the most remark- 
able change, among all that occur to me in the domain of 
education, is the recognition of the university as an entity 
distinct from the college. This is not an American discov- 
ery, nor is it a triumph of the nineteenth century. Colleges 
and universities have not been confounded in Europe. Nor 
did our forefathers lose the perception of a difference. So 
far back as 1777, the famous President Stiles drew up a plan 
of a university for New Haven, which is mentioned in his 
diary, lately published by Professor Dexter. The word was 
used much earlier in Harvard. Nevertheless, it is true that 
the American college grew to be so important and so well 
adapted to the needs of the community that it obscured the 
university idea. Even so recently as the middle of the last 
century universities were commonly regarded as groups of 
schools and establishments for superior education. So are 
they still. This is as it should be. But the scope of univer- 



UNIVERSITY IDEA RECOGNISED 105 

sities has broadened, as the progress of society has demanded 
facilities for study in many branches of knowledge, superior 
to what can be provided for undergraduates. Science has 
demanded laboratories ; letters have demanded libraries, and 
with them seminaries for the handling of books. Thus the 
distinction between gymnasia, where discipline and training 
are received, and the race-courses, w&ere the runners are 
striving for a prize, has been defined. The words " college " 
and " university " are still confounded by the fetters of usage 
and nomenclature, but the difference between enlarged 
university methods, adapted to matured minds, and the 
restricted methods essential to youthful discipline are gener- 
ally admitted. For want of a better term, " graduate stud- 
ies " is the term that has come into vogue for higher work. 
Yale, Princeton, and Columbia have changed their corporate 
names so as to emphasise their changing conditions. Scores 
of institutions now offer, at least in their catalogues, " grad- 
uate " instruction — although it is often of an unsatisfactory 
and rudimentary character, and there is a serious danger that 
the country will soon have a superfluity of feeble universi- 
ties, as it has had a superfluity of poorly endowed colleges. 
Reaction has begun. The stronger foundations have com- 
bined in an informal federation; and colleges of the highest 
character are saying, " We claim to be colleges, and make 
no pretence that we are anything else." 

The effect of this movement has been seen in the profes- 
sional schools, which were formerly open to persons who had 
shown no preparation for the work they were called upon to 
undertake. Now in the best schools of medicine, law, and 
theology the presentation of a diploma or the passing of a 
prescribed examination is requisite. If they have not yet be- 
come schools for graduates, the tendency is in that direction. 
Coincidently, the colleges are offering greater freedom in the 
choice of courses. Special preparation for certain future call- 
ings may be secured by undergraduates, by means of the 



106 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY; 

group system in some one of its modifications, or by absolute 
election. In no one of the professions is preliminary train- 
ing more important than it is in medicine. The physician 
should indeed be a man of liberal culture, but he must also 
be a man of technical skill, and that technical skill can only 
be acquired by habits of close observation, by a knowledge 
of the physical and chemical laws of nature, by familiarity 
with the forms and functions of plants and the lower ani- 
mals. Probably the most remarkable advances in higher 
education within the last twenty-five years are to be found in 
medicine. Still greater advances are already in sight. 

These reminiscences were in type when two incidents oc- 
curred, among the pleasantest and most remarkable in a long 
experience of academic life. I gave up the presidential chair 
in the Johns Hopkins University, not because I was tired of 
it, not because I was conscious of bodily infirmity, but out of 
deference to the widespread usage of this country, which 
suggests that, at a certain age, seniors should make way for 
juniors. The unanimous choice of a successor, President 
Remsen; generous additions to our resources, especially the 
new site offered by Baltimore friends ; and the enthusiasm of 
our graduates when they assembled to celebrate our twenty- 
fifth anniversary, have given abundant evidence that the time 
for a change of administration was felicitous. 

I was looking forward to a period of comparative leisure, 
when an interview with Mr. Andrew Carnegie, the evan- 
gelist of beneficence (as I venture to call him), who has 
preached and practised " the gospel of wealth," completely 
altered the outlook. Near the end of November, 1901, I 
called upon him, by invitation, at his library in New York, 
where he was sitting surrounded with books and pictures and 
by innumerable testimonials of affection and gratitude. On 
the walls were mottoes that seem to have been the guides of 
his life. One person was present. 

I cannot repeat the conversation of that morning, although 



CARNEGIE INSTITUTION 107 

the principal remarks of Mr. Carnegie are impressed upon 
my memory. He was in a very thoughtful mood, inclined 
to ask searching questions, and quite able to keep his own 
counsel. At length he said : " I am willing to give ten 
millions for an institution the purpose of which shall be the 
advancement of knowledge." This was not all that he said, 
but it is all that I tell. It is quite enough, for in that single 
phrase is the germ of the extraordinary plans that have since 
been developed. People who have never made large gifts 
think it an easy matter to organise " an institution." Those 
who have tried find it difficult. With several such per- 
sons I have had confidential relations, and I have seen that 
(to use the Quaker phrase) they have had " concerns." One 
" concern " is whom to trust, the other " concern " is what 
to confide. It was by no means a simple or an easy task to 
organise the Carnegie Institution. Precedents were wanting. 

Mr. Carnegie raised many hard questions: How is it that 
knowledge is increased? How can rare intellects be discov- 
ered in the undeveloped stages? Where is the exceptional 
man to be found? Would a new institution be regarded as 
an injury to Johns Hopkins, or to Harvard, Yale, Colum- 
bia, or any other university? What should the term " know- 
ledge " comprise? Who should be the managers of the insti- 
tution? How broad or how restricted should be the terms 
of the gift? 

These are only examples of the perplexing problems which 
presented themselves to one who was not anxious for fame; 
not devoted to a hobby; not inclined to impose limitations, 
but who had an eye single to the good of his adopted coun- 
try, and through our country to the good of the world. 

It will not do for me to tell at this time who were his 
chosen counsellors in the incipient stages of his plan, but they 
were many in number, including some whose names have not 
been publicly mentioned. Gradually the idea, which was 
seen at first in broad outlines only, took definite shape, as, 



108 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

under the sculptor's hands, an image becomes shapely, 
comely, and life-like. 

It was the original purpose of Mr. Carnegie to make the 
gift directly to the nation, and for that reason he communi- 
cated an outline of his plan to the President of the United 
States, by whom it was received with the most generous ap- 
preciation. Reflection led to a change. On the whole, it 
was thought best to organise an independent corporation, or 
body of trustees, and charge them with carrying out the 
project. Upon such a board the President of the United 
States, the President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the 
House consented to serve, ex officio. 

The secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Mr. Lang- 
ley, and the president of the National Academy of Sciences, 
Mr. Agassiz, were also officially designated members of the 
Board. 

Three members of the Cabinet were added by name, a 
justice of the Supreme Court, two other distinguished judges, 
several business men of the highest standing, a lawyer and 
diplomatist of international fame, heads of two governmental 
bureaus, the chief of the New York Public Library, a dis- 
tinguished physician, a Senator, and two men who had been 
prominent in the promotion of higher education. They rep- 
resented every part of the country — from Boston to San 
Francisco, from Chicago to New Orleans. I do not know 
that anyone could state the political or ecclesiastical ties of 
the Board. Every one of the trustees has been long in public 
service or wonted to the administration of important trusts. 1 

1 Trustees elected by the incorporators at the request of the 
founder. Ex-officio: The President of the United States; the Presi- 
dent of the Senate ; the Speaker of the House of Representatives ; the 
secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; the president of the 
National Academy of Sciences. — Grover Cleveland, New Jersey; 
John S. Billings, New York; William E. Dodge; William N. Frew, 
Pennsylvania; Lyman P. Gage, Illinois; Daniel C. Gilman, Mary- 
land; John Hay, District of Columbia; Abram S. Hewitt, New 



CARNEGIE INSTITUTION 109 

Then came another incident more memorable than the in- 
terview I have described and, perhaps, more important. By 
invitation of Hon. John Hay, Secretary of State, the trustees 
assembled for the first time January 29, 1 902, in the diplo- 
matic room of the State Department. It is truly a state 
apartment — spacious and handsomely furnished, the walls 
covered by portraits of the distinguished predecessors of Mr. 
Hay. Just above the chair of the presiding officer were the 
likenesses of Daniel Webster and Lord Ashburton, as if the 
old country and the new were alike cognizant of the pro- 
ceeding. The formal articles of incorporation having been 
read, and temporary officers chosen, the princely giver rose 
and read his deed of gift. It was brief, in legal form, be- 
stowing the sum of $10,000,000 on the Carnegie Institution 
for the Advancement of Knowledge. The restrictions were 
very simple and very wise. Mr. Carnegie then added a few 
remarks. I am not sure whether he read them or spoke them 
— but the substance of what he said has been placed on rec- 
ord, and it will always be regarded as the spontaneous utter- 
ance of a full mind at a very critical moment. 

In these three papers it is made clear that the Carnegie 
Institution is not, as it has been called, a " university " or a 
place for the systematic education of youth, in advanced or 
professional departments of knowledge. Nor is it a memo- 
rial to George Washington. Mr. Carnegie disclaimed any 
intention of associating his name with that of one who stands 
alone. Its chief function is the encouragement of research. 
This may be done by stipends to individuals or to institu- 

Jersey; Henry L. Higginson, Massachusetts; Henry Hitchcock, 
Missouri; Charles H. Hutchinson, Illinois; William Lindsay, Ken- 
tucky; Seth Low, New York; Wayne MacVeagh, Pennsylvania; D. 
O. Mills, New York; S. Weir Mitchell, Pennsylvania; William W. 
Morrow, California; Elihu Root, New York; John C. Spooner, Wis- 
consin ; Andrew D. White, New York ; Edward D. White, Louisiana ; 
Charles D. Walcott, District of Columbia; Carroll D. Wright, Dis- 
trict of Columbia. 



no THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

tions, by the provision of costly apparatus, by the payment 
of assistants, or by the publication of memoirs. No branch 
of knowledge is excluded from the scope of the trustees. No 
fetters are imposed upon their action. They are expected 
to see what the suggestions of the wisest men in the land will 
bring forth. 

It is clear that in the development of this plan, the advice 
of the ablest men must be sought. Accordingly, it is the pur- 
pose of the Executive Committee, acting in the name of the 
Trustees, to ask the counsel of the wisest of our countrymen. 
They will not all be famous men. Some are known only in 
very limited circles — they are quiet men who are working 
out great problems, free from the observation of all except 
those whose studies are kindred. Others are known through- 
out this country and in Europe. Some may be found abroad. 
Already many valuable suggestions have been made ; more are 
coming in. It will not be long before a group of astrono- 
mers are asked their advice in astronomy; of biologists in 
biology; of chemists in chemistry; of economists in econom- 
ics — so on through the alphabet of the sciences. After this 
preliminary reconnaissance, a report and a plan will be pre- 
pared, and the conclusions made public. This will take time, 
months, certainly. But the opportunity is one that requires 
the most careful consideration, for everyone knows that insti- 
tutions which are plastic in their incipiency soon harden like 
cement. 

It is obvious that at present, certainly, there is no need of 
a stately building, like that of the Smithsonian; no occasion 
to establish a Reichsanstalt, like that of Charlottenburg, for 
the government has its efficient bureau of standards; no rea- 
son for adding one to the libraries and laboratories of Wash- 
ington before some special need is manifest. Avoid duplica- 
tion; help that which is good, and will be better with some 
assistance; seek out untrodden but promising fields of in- 
quiry; utilise existing faculties instead of building up a new 



INCIDENTS OF EARLY YEARS III 

academic body. Look out for minds of unusual capacity and 
promise. 

These are the purposes of the Institution as stated by the 
wise and munificent founder: 

x. To promote original research, paying great attention thereto as 
one of the most important of all departments. 

2. To discover the exceptional man in every department of study 
whenever and wherever found, inside or outside of school, and 
enable him to make the work for which he seems specially designed 
his life-work. 

3. To increase facilities for higher education. 

4. To increase the efficiency of the universities and other in- 
stitutions of learning throughout the country, by utilising and adding 
to their existing facilities and aiding teachers in the various in- 
stitutions for experimental and other work, in these institutions as 
far as advisable. 

5. To enable such students as may find Washington the best point 
for their special studies, to enjoy the advantages of the museums, 
libraries, laboratories, observatory, meteorological, piscicultural, and 
forestry schools, and kindred institutions of the several departments 
of the government. 

6. To insure the prompt publication and distribution of the re- 
sults of scientific investigation, a field considered highly important. 

In one comprehensive phrase he stated his aim as follows: 

It is proposed to found in the city of Washington an institution 
which with the cooperation of institutions now or hereafter estab- 
lished, there or elsewhere, shall in the broadest and most liberal 
manner encourage investigation, research, and discovery; show the 
application of knowledge to the improvement of mankind; pro- 
vide such buildings, laboratories, books, and apparatus, as may be 
needed; and afford instruction of an advanced character to students 
properly qualified to profit thereby. 

Is not this conception of a plan and its inception unique in 
the history of civilisation? I know of nothing to compare 
with it. 

When I began this series of reminiscences, I could not 



ii2 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

have forecast this last development. Perhaps I have dwelt too 
long upon it. If so, my apology is the profound interest 
which has been shown in Mr. Carnegie's plans, and the op- 
portunity that I have to speak of a few points " not gener- 
ally known." The public may rest assured that the trustees 
are all of them alive to their responsibilities, and are seeking, 
before the full initiation of the work intrusted to them, to 
secure the light that many men of many minds will throw 
upon the problem. They will endeavour to follow the wise 
example of the founder, and seek only to promote the prog- 
ress of knowledge and the good of mankind. 



PUBLICATIONS 



mi 

PUBLICATIONS 

I will now tell the origin of the publications which have 
been such a noteworthy factor in the usefulness of the Johns 
Hopkins University. While I was on the continent of 
Europe my attention was constantly called to the import- 
ance of encouraging professors to engage in independent in- 
vestigations, and of providing means for the publication of 
such results as they might reach. In Germany, especially, it 
was regarded as essential to the life of a vigorous university 
that it should make contributions to knowledge, through the 
members of its staff. The Smithsonian Institution of Wash- 
ington had set an admirable example in our own country. 
The American Journal of Science had been for many years a 
repository of important papers. The Memoirs of the Har- 
vard Astronomical Observatory, and of the United States 
Naval Observatory, within their restricted field, were serv- 
iceable. The Journal of the American Oriental Society 
and of the American Philological Association were limited 
by want of pecuniary support. The Proceedings of such so- 
cieties as the American Academy, the American Philosophical 
Society, the Connecticut Academy, and the American As- 
sociation for the Advancement of Science, and other serials, 
furnished to some extent opportunities for printing, but all of 
them combined were inadequate to the demands of American 
investigators. Professor Newcomb in an article on Abstract 
Science in America, published in the centennial number 
(1876), of the North American Review, made a vivid por- 
trayal of the deficiencies of the United States. 

When Sylvester agreed to come to Baltimore, he was re- 
us 



n6 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY; 

quested to bring with him the Mathematical Journal, of 
which he had been one of the editors, but this was not practic- 
able. His American colleague, Dr. W. E. Story, inde- 
pendently proposed the establishment of an American Journal 
of Mathematics, and, after a good deal of correspondence, it 
was decided to begin such a journal, in a quarterly form, and 
to ask the concurrent editorial aid of professors in other uni- 
versities. It was intended that the Journal should be open 
freely to contributors in any part of the country. This im- 
portant periodical has now reached its twenty-ninth volume. 

The beginning of the American Chemical Journal was 
quite different. As soon as Professor Remsen began his 
duties he wished to publish the contributions to chemistry 
which were made in the laboratory under his charge, and he 
asked leave of the Trustees to print, from time to time, such 
reports. As it was thought best that they should appear in 
an established journal, the editors of the American Journal 
of Science in New Haven were asked to accept them. They 
declined, because their pages were more than full. Then an 
effort was made to secure their publication as supplementary 
communications to be separately paid for, like those which 
were printed by Professor Marsh respecting his discoveries. 
This proposition was also declined. The Professor of 
Chemistry then proposed to publish a journal, and to open 
its pages to other chemists throughout the country; and 
thus began the series which has continued, without inter- 
ruption, until the present time. It was meant to be an 
American, not a local journal. 

Professor Gildersleeve likewise felt the need of a journal 
which should be devoted to classical and comparative 
philology; and he was encouraged by the Trustees to es- 
tablish the periodical which he has edited without interrup- 
tion from that time until this. In 1876 there was nothing in 
the field except a meagre annual pamphlet issued by the 
American Philological Association and the learned memoirs 



PUBLICATIONS 117 

published under the supervision of Professor Whitney, by 
the American Oriental Society. The American Journal of 
Philology met with immediate success. It was so success- 
ful that, before very long, corresponding publications ap- 
peared elsewhere. In Baltimore the Journal of Modern 
Languages was instituted, first at the expense of the Profes- 
sor of Romance Languages, Dr. A. Marshall Elliott, and 
some years later with aid from the University chest. 

In history and politics many able students were soon as- 
sembled, under the inspiring leadership of Dr. Herbert B. 
Adams, whose instructions were reinforced in Economics by 
Dr. Richard T. Ely. The instructors and the students 
made investigations especially in the domain of American 
Institutional History, which were printed in successive num- 
bers of a series entitled, " Johns Hopkins University Studies 
in History and Politics." These papers were widely circu- 
lated and attracted so much attention that persons connected 
with other institutions offered their contributions. The long 
series published under this title constitutes one of the mosjt 
important works of reference for those who would become ac- 
quainted with the development of American institutions. 
The allusions to its value by Professor Freeman and by John 
Fiske are not to be overlooked. 

The contributions to Assyriology and Semitic Philology 
by Dr. Haupt, deserve special mention, and there is a long 
list of separate volumes which would be included if this were 
meant to be a bibliographical list. The publications of the 
Maryland Geological Survey and of the Johns Hopkins 
Medical School are also noteworthy. 



THE JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICAL 
SCHOOL 



VIII 

THE JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICAL SCHOOL 

The early days of the Johns Hopkins Medical School are 
now to be considered. The credit of seeing the importance of 
so uniting University and Hospital that both institutions 
might contribute to the cure of ailments, the advancement of 
science, and the training of physicians, is due to the founder 
and to those who acted with him in the beginning. Prob- 
ably, among the most influential of these advisers were 
Francis T. King and Charles J. M. Gwinn. As I have 
already indicated Mr. King had what has been called " a 
hospitable mind." He was on the alert for good advice and 
for good advisers. He gathered from many fields. He 
knew the difference between wheat and chaff, and with almost 
automatic precision he threw aside the husks and stored the 
kernels found in every load of corn. With the instinct of 
an angler, he knew where to find and how to land the 
salmon and the trout. Before the ground was broken for 
the hospital he visited other infirmaries to observe their 
merits and their deficiencies. His knowledge and judgment 
commanded the confidence of his colleagues to such a de- 
gree that they gave him almost autocratic powers as Presi- 
dent of the Hospital Board. 

Mr. Gwinn was of a different cast. He was not lacking 
in enthusiasm nor in interest respecting the problems then un- 
der discussion, but his unusual ability as a lawyer made him 
cautious. He looked at both sides of every question, and 
when he gave an opinion, it was sure to be based on careful 
consideration of the pros and cons. As his mind was exact, 
his pen was ready, and he was constantly called upon to draft 
such instruments as required precision. I do not know, but 



122 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

I suppose, that he wrote the will of Johns Hopkins, and that 
he was the author of a remarkable letter which stands as a 
sort of Bill of Rights among the fundamental provisions for 
the two foundations. 

The site for the hospital was chosen by the founder. It 
was on high ground, from which the water ran off in every 
direction, free from objectionable neighbours, producers of 
smoke and noise, and (as I have heard Mr. King remark) 
not far from the manufacturing district of Canton where 
labouring people were prone to accidents. The next step 
was to determine the building plans. To facilitate a decision, 
five hospital experts, in different parts of the country, were 
invited to present their views in elaborate reports. They 
were not architects, but medical men who had been con- 
cerned in the conduct of hospitals. These reports were 
printed (with diagrams) in an octavo volume. Afterwards, 
with the aid of architects, the general plans were adopted, 
and gradually the details were worked out. In perfecting 
these plans and in directing the work of construction, one of 
the authors, Dr. John S. Billings, was the expert adviser of 
the Trustees. His great capacity for business, his acquaint- 
ance with hospital management during the Civil War, and 
his unwearying industry made him an invaluable counsellor; 
but the story of his services belongs to the Hospital, rather 
than to the University, and so I pass it by. 

After the plans were adopted, the construction of the hos- 
pital proceeded slowly. Mr. King could not be hurried. 
Only the income of the endowment was employed. Year 
by year the opening of the wards was postponed. Mean- 
while the University authorities were studying the problem 
of medical education, for it was fore-ordained that medicine 
and the allied sciences should be one of the principal cares 
of the University. Professor Huxley, then recognised as an 
able advocate of the study of nature, was invited to deliver an 
opening lecture, which was chiefly directed to medical edu- 



JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICAL SCHOOL 123 

cation. Dr. Martin's courses in biology were so arranged 
as to be of special service to prospective physicians. A pre- 
liminary medical course was announced. The nucleus of a 
medical Faculty was established. Inquiries were made as to 
suitable incumbents for the professorial chairs. Medical 
schools, at home and abroad, were visited. Everything was 
hopeful. Then unexpected disasters occurred. The invest- 
ment which the founder had selected for the University 
ceased to yield its usual income, and then ceased to yield any 
income whatever. It was not until Miss Mary E. Garrett 
came forward, several years later, with a gift of nearly half 
a million dollars, supplementing a large contribution from 
friends of the medical education of women, that the organisa- 
tion of the Medical School was perfected. 

The first appointment on the Medical Faculty was Dr. 
William H. Welch. The medical profession generally 
recognised at that time the importance of bacteriology, and 
were desirous that the new School in Baltimore should in- 
clude on its staff one who was eminent in the modern study 
of pathology. Inquiries as to such a person were made in 
this country, in England, and on the Continent, and, after 
a great deal of scrutiny, the choice fell upon the gentleman 
just named. He was persuaded to leave the post which he 
then filled in the Bellevue Medical College of New York, 
was allowed a year's leave of absence to further fit himself 
for his new work in the laboratories of Germany, and en- 
tered upon his duties in 1885. He was the first Dean of the 
Medical School, and, in all the developments of his plans, his 
learning, his good sense, and his enthusiasm were most helpful. 

Looking forward to the future organisation of the Medi- 
cal School, Dr. William Osier was appointed Professor of 
Medicine and Chief Physician to the Hospital ; and with him 
were associated Dr. Halsted, in surgery, and Dr. Kelly, in 
gynaecology. When the time came to offer systematic in- 
struction, these gentlemen formed a nucleus of the Medical 



124 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

Faculty, and they added to their numbers Dr. Mall, in 
anatomy, Dr. Howell, in physiology, and Dr. Abel, in phar- 
macology, and, afterwards, many special associates and in- 
structors. 

At the beginning it was decided that those only who were 
already graduates in Arts or who had an equivalent training 
should be received as candidates for the degree of Doctor of 
Medicine. Most of the medical schools in the country re- 
ceived pupils with very slight examination, and even the fore- 
most required nothing like the conditions of a baccalaureate 
degree. But it was not considered that a baccalaureate de- 
gree would be by itself a sufficient evidence of preliminary 
knowledge. It was therefore required that all such candidates 
should have pursued courses of instruction that included 
chemistry, physics, and biology, with some knowledge of 
French and German. By these conditions it was intended to 
bring together a superior class of persons who had made such 
progress in the line of their life work that their future suc- 
cess might be considered as assured. In other words, the 
medical instruction was to be based upon an acquaintance 
with the laws of normal and healthy life, and the candidates 
were to have sufficient knowledge of French and German, 
at least, to read the scientific papers constantly appearing in 
those languages. 

The Medical School sprang at once into a position of 
great influence, as the Philosophical Department had already 
succeeded in its early days. The graduates of the School, 
after four years' training, were sought for in every part of 
the land, and are now to be found as instructors at Cam- 
bridge, on the Atlantic coast, and at San Francisco, on the 
Pacific, and in the best medical schools between those two ex- 
tremes. In the Medical School, as well as in the Philosophi- 
cal, the publication of memoirs was encouraged. The Hos- 
pital Reports now number eleven volumes; and the Jour- 
nal of Experimental Medicine begun here in 1896 and now 
published in New York, has reached its seventh volume. 



RESIGNATION 

A Farewell Address after Twenty-five Years* 

Service 



RETIREMENT AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS' SERVICE 

After twenty-five years' service, having reached the 
age of seventy years, I requested to be released from the 
office of President of the Johns Hopkins University, 
which I had held since 1875. My colleague during all 
that period, Dr. Ira Rerasen, Professor of Chemistry, 
was elected to the vacant chair, and was formally in- 
ducted into his office on the 22d of February, 1902. 
The celebration lasted during two days, and has been 
fully recorded in the volume published by the Uni- 
versity. 



IX 

RESIGNATION: A FAREWELL ADDRESS, FEBRUARY 22, 1902 

This occasion is too important, the audience too varied, 
the visitors too many and too distinguished, to warrant the 
employment of the time allotted to me in personal reminis- 
cences and local congratulations. We are rather bound to 
consider some of the grave problems of education which 
have engaged, during a quarter of a century, the study of able 
and learned men, and have led to the development, in this 
country, of the idea of the University. This period has seen 
marvellous improvements in higher education, and although, 
in the history of intellectual development, the nineteenth 
century may not be as significant as the thirteenth, when 
modern universities came into being at Bologna, Paris, and 
Oxford, yet we have lived at a time when forces have been 
set to work of the highest significance. Libraries, seminaries 
and laboratories have been enlarged and established in every 
part of the land. 

Let us go back to the year 1876, that year of jubilee, when 
the centennial celebration in Philadelphia brought together, 
in open concord, States and people separated by dissension 
and war. Representatives from every part of the land as- 
sembled in the City of Brotherly Love to commemorate 
the growth of a century. The triumph of liberal and in- 
dustrial arts, the progress of architecture, sculpture, and paint- 
ing, were interpreted by the music of our Sidney Lanier. 
The year was certainly propitious. So was the place. 
Maryland was a central State, and Baltimore a midway sta- 
tion between the North and the South. The people had been 
divided by the war, but there were no battle fields in our 

127 



128 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

neighbourhood to keep in mind the strife of brethren. The 
State of Maryland had been devoted to the idea of higher 
education ever since an enthusiast in the earliest colonial days 
projected the establishment of a university on an island in the 
Susquehanna. Liberal charters had been granted to colleges, 
of which St. John's, the successor of the first free school, 
must have honourable mention, a college likely to be in- 
creasingly useful during the twentieth century. The Uni- 
versity of Maryland, with scanty resources, encouraged pro- 
fessional training in law, medicine, and the liberal arts 
(nominally also, in theology), but its efforts were restricted 
by the lack of funds. Nathan R. Smith, David Hoffman 
and other men of eminence were in the faculty. The 
Catholic Church had established within the borders of the 
State a large number of important schools of learning. One 
of them, St. Mary's College, under the cultivated fathers 
of St. Sulpice, had been the training place of some of the 
original promoters of the Johns Hopkins University. Yet 
there was nothing within the region between Philadelphia 
and Charlottesville, between the Chesapeake and the Ohio, 
which embodied, in 1876, the idea of a true university. 
Thus it appears that the time, the place and the circumstances, 
were favourable to an endowment which seemed to be ex- 
traordinarily large, for the munificence of Rockefeller, Stan- 
ford and Carnegie could not be foreseen. 

The founder made no effort to unfold a plan. He simply 
used one word, — University, — and he left it to his succes- 
sors to declare its meaning in the light of the past, in the hope 
of the future. There is no indication that he was interested 
in one branch of knowledge more than in another. He had 
no educational " fad." There is no evidence that he had 
read the writings of Cardinal Newman or of Mark Patti- 
son, and none that the great parliamentary reports had 
come under his eye. He was a large-minded man, who knew 
that the success of the foundation would depend upon the 



RESIGNATION 129 

wisdom of those to whom its development was entrusted; 
and the Trustees were large-minded men who knew that 
their efforts must be guided by the learning, the experience, 
and the devotion of the Faculty. There was a natural de- 
sire, in this locality, that the principal positions should be 
filled by men with whom the community was acquainted, 
but the Trustees were not governed by an aspiration so pro- 
vincial. They sought the best men that could be found, with- 
out regard to the places where they were born, or the colleges 
where they had been educated. So, on Washington's birth- 
day, in 1876, afterwords of benediction from the President of 
Harvard University, our early counsellor and our constant 
friend, the plans of this University were publicly announced 
in the President's inaugural speech. 

As I cast my thoughts backwards, memories of the good 
and great who have been members of our society rise vividly 
before me — benefactors who have aided us by generous gifts, 
in emergencies and in prosperity; faithful guardians of the 
trust; illustrious teachers; and brilliant scholars who have 
proceeded to posts of usefulness and honour, now and then in 
Japan, in India, in Canada, but most of them in our own 
land, from Harvard to the Golden Gate. 

I must not linger, but lead you on to broader themes. May 
I venture to assume that we are an assembly of idealists. 
As such I speak; as such you listen. We are also practical 
men. As such, we apply ourselves to useful purposes, and 
to our actions we apply the test of common sense. Are 
our aims high enough? are they too high? are our methods 
justified by experience? are they approved by the judgment 
of our peers; can we see any results from the labours of five 
and twenty years? can we justify a vigorous appeal for en- 
largement? These and kindred questions press themselves 
for consideration on this memorial day. But in trying to 
answer them, let us never lose sight of the ideal, — let us care 
infinitely more for the future than we do for the past. Let us 



130 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

compare our work with what is done elsewhere and with 
what might be done in Baltimore. In place of pride and 
satisfaction, or of regret that our plans have been impeded, let 
us rejoice that the prospects are so encouraging, that the op- 
portunities of yesterday will be surpassed to-morrow. 

If it be true that " the uses of adversity " are sweet, — 
adversity that " wears yet a precious jewel in his head," — 
let us look forward to leaving our restricted site for a per- 
manent home where our academic life will be " exempt from 
public haunt/' where we shall " find tongues in trees, books 
in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every- 
thing." In faith and hope and gratitude, I have a vision 
of Homewood, where one person and another will build 
the structures of which we stand in so much need, — where 
scholarship will have its quiet retreat, where experimental 
science will be removed from the jar of the city street, where 
health and vigour will be promoted by athletic sports in the 
groves of Academus. The promised land which Moses sees 
from Pisgah, our Joshua will possess. 

At the close of the Civil War came the opportunity of 
Baltimore. It led to an extraordinary and undesigned fulfil- 
ment of an aspiration of George Washington. As his exact 
language is not often quoted, I venture to give it here. In 
his last will and testament, after expressing his ardent de- 
sire that local attachments and State prejudices should dis- 
appear, he uses the following words : 

Looking anxiously forward to the accomplishment of so desir- 
able an object as this is (in my estimation), my mind has not been 
able to contemplate any plan more likely to effect the measure, than 
the establishment of a University in the central part of the United 
States, to which the youths of fortune and talents from all parts 
thereof may be sent for the completion of their education, in all the 
branches of polite literature, in arts and sciences, in acquiring knowl- 
edge in the principles of politics and good government, and, as a 
matter of infinite importance in my judgment, by associating with 
each other, and forming friendships in juvenile years, be enabled to 



RESIGNATION 131 

free themselves in a proper degree from those local prejudices and 
habitual jealousies which have just been mentioned, and which, 
when carried to excess, are never-failing sources of disquietude to 
the public mind, and pregnant of mischievous consequences to this 
country. 

You will please to notice that he did not speak of a university 
in Washington, but of a university " in the central part of 
the United States." What is now the central part of the 
United States? Is it Chicago or is it Baltimore? 

Let me now proceed to indicate the conditions which ex- 
isted in this country when our work was projected. You 
will see that extraordinary advances have been made. The 
munificent endowments of Mr. John D. Rockefeller and of 
Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford, the splendid generosity of 
the State legislatures in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, 
California, and other Western States, the enlarged resources 
of Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Pennsylvania and 
other well established universities, and now the unique and 
unsurpassed generosity of Mr. Carnegie, have entirely 
changed the aspects of liberal education and of scientific 
investigation. 

As religion, the relation of finite man to the Infinite, is the 
most important of all human concerns, I begin by a brief ref- 
erence to the attitude of universities toward Faith and 
Knowledge. The earliest universities of Europe were either 
founded by the church or by the state. Whatever their 
origin, they were under the control, to a large extent, of ec- 
clesiastical authorities. These traditions came to our coun- 
try, and the original colleges were founded by learned and 
godly men, most of them, if not all, ministers of the gospel. 
Later, came the State universities and later still, the private 
foundations like that in which we are concerned. Gradually, 
among the Protestants, laymen have come to hold the chief 
positions of authority formerly held by the clergy. The 
official control, however, is less interesting at this moment 



132 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

than the attitude of universities toward the advancement of 
knowledge. To-day, happily, apprehensions are not felt, 
to any great extent, respecting the advancement of science. 
It is more and more clearly seen that the interpretation of the 
laws by which the universe is governed, extending from the 
invisible rays of the celestial world to the most minute mani- 
festations of organic life, reveal one plan, one purpose, one 
supreme sovereignty — far transcending the highest concep- 
tions to which the human mind can attain respecting this 
sovereign and infinite Power. Sectarian supremacy and 
theological differences have dwindled therefore to insignifi- 
cance, in institutions where the supreme desire is to under- 
stand the world in which we are placed, and to develop the 
ablest intellects of each generation, subservient to the primeval 
injunction " replenish the earth and subdue it ; and have 
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the 
air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." 
Notwithstanding these words, the new biology, that is the 
study of living creatures, encountered peculiar prejudices and 
oppositions. It was the old story over again. Geology, 
early in the century, had been violently attacked ; astronomy, 
in previous centuries, met its bitter opponents; higher criti- 
cism is now dreaded. Yet quickly and patiently the investi- 
gator has prosecuted and will continue his search for the 
truth, — heedless of consequences, assured by the Master's 
words, " the truth shall make you free." 

Still the work goes on. Science is recognised as the hand- 
maid of religion. Evolution is regarded by many theologians 
as confirming the strictest doctrines of predestination. The 
propositions which were so objectionable thirty years ago are 
now received with as little alarm as the propositions of 
Euclid. There are mathematicians who do not regard the 
Euclidean geometry as the best mode of presenting certain 
mathematical truths, and there are also naturalists who will 
not accept the doctrines of Darwin, without limitation or 



RESIGNATION 133 

modification, but nobody thinks of fighting over the utter- 
ances of either of these philosophers. In fact, I think it one 
of the most encouraging signs of our times that devout men, 
devoted to scientific study, see no conflict between their re- 
ligious faith and their scientific knowledge. Is it not true 
that as the realm of Knowledge extends, the reign of Faith, 
though restricted, remains? Is it not true that science to- 
day is as far from demonstrating certain great propositions, 
which in the depths of our souls we all believe, as it was in 
the days of the Greek philosophers? This university, at 
the outset, assumed the position of a fearless and determined 
investigator of nature. It carried on its work with quiet, 
reverent, and unobtrusive recognition of the immanence of 
divine power, — of the Majesty, Dominion, and Might, known 
to men by many names, revered by us in the words that we 
learned from our mothers' lips, Almighty God, the Father 
Everlasting. 

Another danger, thirty years ago, was that of conflict 
between the advocates of classical and scientific study. For 
many centuries Greek and Latin were supreme in the faculty 
of liberal arts, enforced and strengthened by metaphysics and 
mathematics. During the last half century, physical and 
natural sciences have claimed an equal rank. The promo- 
tion has not been yielded without a struggle, but it is pleasant 
to remember that in this place no conflict has arisen. Among 
us, one degree, that of Bachelor of Arts, is given alike to the 
students of the Humanities and the students of Nature, and 
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy may be won by advanced 
work in the most remote languages of the past or in the most 
recent developments of biology and physics. Two illus- 
trious teachers were the oldest members of the original 
faculty; — one of them universally recognised as among the 
foremost geometricians of all the world, — the other renowned 
for his acquaintance with the masters of thought in many 
tongues, and especially for his appreciation of the writers of 



134 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

ancient Greece, upon whose example all modern literature 
is based. 

Our fathers spoke of " church and state," and we but re- 
peat their ideas when we say that universities are the promo- 
ters of pure religion and wise government. This university 
has not been identified with political partisanship, — though, 
its members, like all patriots, have held and expressed their 
opinions upon current questions, local and national. Never 
have the political views of any teacher helped or hindered his 
preferment; nor have I any idea what would be the result 
of the party classification of our staff. This, however, may 
be claimed. The study of politics, in the sense of Freeman, 
" History is past politics, and politics present history," has 
been diligently promoted. The principles of Roman law, in- 
ternational arbitration, jurisprudence, economics and institu- 
tional history have here been set forth and inculcated, so 
that in every part of the land we can point to our graduates 
as the wise interpreters of political history, the strong pro- 
moters of democratic institutions, the firm believers in the 
merit system of appointments, and in local self-government. 

A phrase which has lately been in vogue is original re- 
search. Like all other new terms, it is often misapplied, 
often misunderstood. It may be the highest occupation of the 
human mind. It may be the most insignificant. A few 
words may therefore be requisite to explain our acceptance of 
this word. When this university began, it was a common 
complaint, still uttered in many places, that the ablest teachers 
were absorbed in routine and were forced to spend their 
strength in the discipline of tyros, so that they had no time 
for carrying forward their studies or for adding to human 
knowledge. Here the position was taken at the outset that 
the chief professors should have ample time to carry on the 
higher work for which they have shown themselves qualified, 
and also that younger men, as they gave evidence of uncom- 
mon qualities, should likewise be encouraged to devote them- 



RESIGNATION 135 

selves to study. Even those who were candidates for de- 
grees were taught what was meant by profitable investigation. 
They were shown how to discover the limits of the known ; 
how to extend, even by minute accretions, the realm of know- 
ledge; how to co-operate with other men in the prosecution 
of inquiry; and how to record in exact language, and on the 
printed page, the results attained. Investigation has thus 
been among us the duty of every leading professor, and he has 
been the guide and inspirer of fellows and pupils, whose work 
may not bear his name, but whose results are truly products 
of the inspiration and guidance which he has freely bestowed. 

The complaint was often heard, in the early seventies, 
that no provision was made in this country for post-graduate 
work except in the three professional schools. Accordingly, 
a system of fellowships, of scholarships, and of other pro- 
visions for advanced study was established here, so well 
adapted to the wants of the country at that time that its pro- 
visions have been widely copied in other places. It now 
seems as if there was danger of rivalry in the solicitation of 
students, which is certainly unworthy, and there is danger 
also that too many men will receive stipendiary encourage- 
ment to prepare themselves for positions they can never at- 
tain. In the early days of the French Academy when a 
seat in that body was a very great prize, a certain young man 
was told to wait until he was older, and the remark was 
added that in order to secure good speed from horses, a 
basket of oats should always be tied to the front of the car- 
riage pole as a constant incitement. It would indeed be a 
misfortune if a system of fellowships should be open to this 
objection. Nevertheless, whoever scans our register of Fel- 
lows will discover that many of the ablest men in the coun- 
try, of the younger generation, have here received encourage- 
ment and aid. 

When this university began, the opportunities for scien- 
tific publication in this country were very meagre. The 



136 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

American Journal of Science was the chief repository for 
short and current papers. The memoirs of a few learned 
societies came out at slow intervals and could not be freely 
opened to investigators. This university, in the face of ob- 
vious objection, determined to establish certain journals 
which might be the means of communication between the 
scholars of this country and those abroad. Three journals 
were soon commenced: The American Journal of Mathe- 
matics; the American Journal of Philology; the American 
Chemical Journal. Remember that these were " American " 
journals, in fact as well as in name, open to all the scholars 
of the country. Other periodicals came afterward, devoted 
to History and Politics, to Biology, to Modern Languages, 
to Experimental Medicine and to Anatomy. Moderate ap- 
propriations were made to foreign journals of great impor- 
tance which lacked support, the English Journal of Physiol- 
ogy and the German Journal of Assyriology. Nor were the 
appropriations of the Trustees restricted to periodical litera- 
ture. Generous encouragement was given to the publica- 
tion of important treatises, like the researches of Dr. Brooks 
upon Salpa: to the physiological papers of Dr. Martin; to 
the studies in logic of Mr. Peirce and his followers; to Pro- 
fessor Rowland's magnificent photographs of the solar spec- 
trum ; to the printing of a facsimile of the earliest Christian 
document after the times of the Apostles; and recently, with 
the co-operation of the University of Tubingen, to the 
exact reproduction by Dr. Bloomfleld of a unique manu- 
script which has an important bearing upon comparative 
philology. 

I am not without apprehensions that our example to the 
country has been infelicitous, not less than thirty institutions 
being known to me which are now engaged in the work of 
publication. The consequence is that it is almost impossible 
for scholars to find out and make use of many important 
memoirs which are thus hidden away. One of the problems 



RESIGNATION 137 

for the next generation to solve is the proper mode of en- 
couraging the publication of scientific treatises. 

I cannot enumerate the works of scholarship which have 
been published without the aid of the university by those 
connected with it, — studies in Greek syntax, in mathematics, 
in history, in chemistry, in biology, in medicine, in econom- 
ics, in pathology and in many other branches. The admin- 
istration now closing can have no monument more enduring 
than the great mass of contributions to knowledge, which 
are gathered (like the cairn of boulders and pebbles which 
commemorates in Cracow the burial place of Kosciusko), a 
bibliothecal cairn, in the office of the Trustees, to remind 
every officer and every visitor of our productivity in science 
and letters. 

There are many who believe that the noblest work in 
which we have engaged is the advancement of medical edu- 
cation and science. Several agencies have been favourable. 
The munificence of the founder established a hospital, which 
was recognised as soon as it was opened as the foremost of 
its kind in Christendom. He directed that when completed 
it should be a part of the University and, accordingly, when 
the time came for organising a medical and surgical staff, the 
principal professors were simultaneously appointed to the 
chairs of one institution, and the clinics of the other. They 
were to be constantly exercised in the relief of suffering and 
in the education of youth. For the lack of the requisite funds, 
the University at first provided only for instruction in those 
scientific branches which underlie the science of medicine. 
At length, the organisation of the school of medicine was 
made possible by a very large gift of money, received from a 
lady of Baltimore, who was familiar with the requirements 
of medical science, and eager to see that they were met. By 
her munificence the University was enabled to organise and 
maintain that great department which now reflects so much 
honour upon this city, and which does so much by example, 



138 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

by publication, by systematic instruction, and by investiga- 
tion to carry forward those varied sciences, anatomy, physi- 
ology, physiological chemistry, pharmacy, pathology, and the 
various branches of medicine and surgery. In accordance 
with the plans of the University, the generous donor made 
it a condition of her gift that candidates for the degree of 
Doctor of Medicine should be those only who had taken a 
baccalaureate degree based upon a prolonged study of science 
and the modern languages. A four years' course of study 
was also prescribed and women were admitted to the classes 
upon the same terms as men. The liberal and antecedent 
aid of women throughout the country in the promotion of 
these plans is commemorated by a building inscribed " the 
Women's Fund Memorial Building." The excellent labo- 
ratory facilities, the clinical opportunities, the organisation 
of a training school for nurses, and especially the ability of 
the physicians and surgeons, have excited abundant emula- 
tion and imitation in other parts of the country, — a wonder- 
ful gain to humanity. It is more and more apparent among 
us that a medical school should be a part of a university and 
closely affiliated with a hospital. It is also obvious that the 
right kind of preliminary training should be antecedent to 
medical studies. 

I must ask the indulgence of our friends from a distance 
as I now dwell, for a moment, on the efforts which have been 
made to identify the Johns Hopkins University with the wel- 
fare of the city of Baltimore and the State of Maryland. 
Such a hospital and such medical advisers as I have referred 
to are not the only benefits of our foundation. The journals, 
which carry the name of Baltimore to every learned society 
in the world are a minor but serviceable advantage. The 
promotion of sanitary reform is noteworthy, the study of 
taxation and in general of municipal conditions, the purifica- 
tion of the local supply of water, the advancement of public 
education by courses of instruction offered to teachers, dili- 



RESIGNATION 139 

gent attention to the duties of charity and philanthropy, 
these are among the services which the faculty have rendered 
to the city of their homes. Their efforts are not restricted 
to the city. A prolonged scientific study of the oyster, its 
life history, and the influences which help or hinder its pro- 
duction, is a valuable contribution. The establishment of a 
meteorological service throughout the State in connection 
with the Weather Bureau of the United States is also impor- 
tant. Not less so is the Geological Survey of Maryland, 
organised with the co-operation of the United States Geo- 
logical Survey, to promote a knowledge of the physical re- 
sources of the State, exact maps, the improvement of high- 
ways, and the study of water supplies, of conditions favour- 
able to agriculture, and of deposits of mineral wealth within 
this region. To the efficiency of these agencies it is no doubt 
due that the State of Maryland has twice contributed to the 
general fund of the university. 

Nor have our studies been merely local. The biological 
laboratory, the first establishment of its kind in this country, 
has carried forward for many years the study of marine life 
at various points on the Atlantic and has published many 
important memoirs, while it has trained many able investi- 
gators now at work in every part of the land. Experimental 
psychology was here introduced. Bacteriology early found 
a home among us. The contributions to chemistry have been 
numerous and important. Here was the cradle of saccha- 
rine, that wisely diffused and invaluable concentration of 
sweetness, whose manufacturers unfortunately do not ac- 
knowledge the source to which it is due. In the physical 
laboratory, light has been thrown upon three fundamental 
subjects: the mechanical equivalent of heat, the exact value 
of the standard ohm, and the elucidation of the nature of the 
solar spectrum. For many years this place was the chief 
seat in this country for pure and advanced mathematics. The 
study of languages and literature, Oriental, classical, and 



i 4 o THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

modern, has been assiduously promoted. Where has the 
Bible received more attention than is given to it in our 
Semitic department? where the study of ancient civilisation 
in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Palestine? where did the Ro- 
mance languages, in their philological aspect, first receive 
attention ? To American and institutional history persistent 
study has been given. Of noteworthy significance also are 
the theses required of those who are admitted to the degree 
of Doctor of Philosophy, which must be printed before the 
candidate is entitled to all the honours of the degree. 

I might enlarge this category, but I will refrain. The time 
allotted to me is gone. Yet I cannot sit down without 
bringing to your minds the memories of those who have been 
with us and have gone out from us to be seen no more: 
Sylvester, that profound thinker devoted to abstractions, the 
illustrious geometer, whose seven prolific years were spent 
among us and who gave an impulse to mathematical re- 
searches in every part of this country; Morris, the Oxford 
graduate, the well-trained classicist, devout, learned, enthu- 
siastic, and helpful, most of all in the education of the 
young; accomplished Martin, who brought to this country 
new methods of physiological inquiry, led the way in the 
elucidation of many problems of profound importance, and 
trained up those who have carried his methods to every part 
of the land; Adams, suggestive, industrious, inspiring, ver- 
satile, beneficent, who promoted, as none had done before, 
systematic studies of the civil, ecclesiastical, and educational 
resources of this country; and Rowland, cut down like 
Adams in his prime, honoured in every land, peer of the 
greatest physicists of our day, never to be forgotten in the 
history of physical science. I remind you also of the early 
student of mathematics, Thomas Craig, and of George 
Huntington Williams, the geologist, whose memory is cher- 
ished with admiration and love. Nor do I forget those who 
have here been trained to become leaders in their various 



RESIGNATION 141 

departments throughout the country. One must be named, 
who has gone from their number, Keeler, the gifted astron- 
omer, who died as the chief of the Lick Observatory in Cali- 
fornia, whose contributions to astronomical science place 
him among the foremost investigators of our day; and an- 
other, the martyr Lazear, who, in order that the pestilence 
of yellow fever might be subdued, gave up his life for 
humanity. 

Like clouds that rake the mountain summit, 
Or waves that own no curbing hand, 

How fast has brother followed brother 
From sunshine to the sunless land. 

It is sad to recall these interrupted careers. It is delightful 
to remember the elevated character of those I have named, 
and delightful to think of hundreds who have been with us, 
carriers to distant parts of our country and to other lands of 
the seeds which they gathered in our gardens of science. It 
is delightful to live in this age of bounty; it is delightful to 
know that the citizens of Baltimore who in former years 
have supplemented the gifts of the founder by more than a 
million of dollars have come forward to support a new ad- 
ministration with the gift of a site of unsurpassed beauty 
and fitness. A new day dawns. "It is always Morning 
somewhere in the world." 



REMEMBRANCE; 
Looking Backwards Over Fifty Years 



LOOKING BACKWARDS OVER FIFTY YEARS 

At the Semi-Centennial of the University of Wis- 
consin, celebrated in Madison in October, 1904, I was 
requested to make a general review of the progress of 
University Education during the period covered by the 
history of that admirable institution, the Child of 
the State. Here is the substance of what was said at 
that time. 



REMEMBRANCES — LOOKING BACKWARDS OVER 
FIFTY YEARS 

The story of the University of Wisconsin, as it has been re- 
corded during this celebration, is an impressive illustration 
of the progress of American society during half a century. 
It has brought to mind a long list of presidents, from John 
H. Lathrop and Henry Barnard to Charles Kendall Adams 
and C. R. Van Hise and another now present, Dr. Chamber- 
lin, men who have had the sagacity to perceive the needs 
of this nascent state, and the skill to secure for it the intel- 
lectual and financial resources requisite for the foundation of 
a strong university. It has also called to our grateful re- 
membrance other citizens of this State, — legislators, states- 
men, speakers, writers, givers, — who have supported the uni- 
versity in its hours of trial and perplexity, and have 
contributed to its growth and prosperity. The task of the 
pioneers has not been easy. No doubt each of them could 
say as Sven Hedin said after a journey of six thousand miles 
through the dry interior of a continent: " Travel in Asia is 
not a dance on the dropping petals of the rose." To found 
and develop a university in a State just emerging from the 
wilderness may seem to the young who look back upon the 
record, a romantic and chivalric enterprise, like the search 
for the Holy Grail ; but to those who took part in the work, 
there were hours of weariness, discouragement, and peril. 
The greater the task, the greater the victory, and the heartier 
the congratulations which this concourse of scholars be- 
stows upon the University of Wisconsin at the close of its 
first half century. I bring you officially the cordial greet- 
ings of the American Association for the Advancement of Sci- 

i45 



i 4 6 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

ence and of your youngest ally, the Carnegie Institution of 
Washington. 

The brief period allotted me for this discourse is mort- 
gaged to the past. I am expected to " look backward." 
Doubtless the honour of presenting such a theme is due to 
the fact that I am a veteran of fifty years' standing, who has 
taken part in many an academic discussion and witnessed 
many a contest; who has seen a school of science grafted 
upon one of the oldest and most conservative of classical 
colleges; who has helped to rescue a State university from 
the limitations of a college of agriculture and enlarge it to 
meet the requirements of a magnificent commonwealth; who 
has watched over the infancy of an institution planned to 
provide advanced opportunities for American youth akin to 
those which are offered in the best of 'foreign universities; 
and, finally, who has seen a munificent fund set apart for 
the encouragement of investigation and the pursuit of knowl- 
edge without the restrictions of a school or college. Pardon 
these personal allusions, which are made to justify the course 
of these remarks. The concrete experiences upon which 
they are based may be designated, in the parlance of the day, 
as " original researches " in the field of American education. 
They involve observation and experiment. 

In order that complete justice may be done to the Univer- 
sity of Wisconsin, we must look beyond the boundaries of 
the State and note the progress made elsewhere. As I view 
the last half century, it is not the introduction of epoch- 
making inventions which impresses me most deeply; it is not 
the marvellous products of the earth, — in oil, in metals, and 
in crops; it is not the rediscovery of dead cities, — Thebes, 
Babylon, and Troy, — nor the opening of China and Japan; 
it is not the catalogue of great men, statesmen, soldiers, 
explorers, poets, musicians, investigators, — the intellectual 
forces of the nineteenth century; it is not great political 
changes like the emancipation of slaves and serfs, the unifi- 



REMEMBRANCES 147 

cation of nations, and the extension of imperial sway coin- 
cident with the progress of democratic rule; it is not the 
growth of great cities ; it is not even the establishment of The 
Hague tribunal and the development of the principle of arbi- 
tration. All this has occurred since the foundation of this 
university, and it is wonderful indeed. But there are other 
changes more impressive than those enumerated; more im- 
pressive because more fundamental and consequently less 
obvious; more pervasive, more suggestive, more enduring. 

Few persons will deny the assertion that the most remark- 
able changes in the last half century are due to the growth of 
science and the spread of the scientific spirit. 

I make the distinction purposely, because knowledge might 
be increased in the cave or cloister, by hermit or monk, by 
the hidden efforts of some genius like Newton or Leibnitz 
or Darwin or Helmholtz ; while in the same period the love of 
science might be smothered, as it was in the Dark Ages, by 
arbitrary restrictions of church or state, or it might be 
blighted in the bud because of popular ignorance. Science 
might grow under any circumstances, but the spirit of science 
will only spread among free and enlightened people. Its 
advance during recent decades is too familiar a theme for 
amplification at this time, especially as at the close of the 
nineteenth century the press teemed with reviews of its 
progress. Text-books, compendiums, encyclopaedias, place 
the results within the reach of everyone. All can learn, if 
they will, what man has found out. 

On the other hand, the scientific spirit cannot thus be 
measured nor stated in compilations. It is perpetually active. 
It is the search for truth, — questioning, doubting, verifying, 
sifting, testing, proving, that which has been handed down; 
observing, weighing, measuring, comparing the phenomena 
of nature, open and recondite. In such researches, a degree 
of accuracy is nowadays reached which was impossible before 
the lens, the balance, and the metre, those marvellous in- 



i 4 8 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

struments of precision, had attained their modern perfection. 
Wherever we look, we may find indications of the scientific 
spirit. The search after origins and the grounds of belief, 
the love of natural history, the establishment of laborato- 
ries, the perfection of scientific apparatus, the formation of 
scientific associations, and the employment of scientific 
methods in history, politics, economics, philology, psychology, 
are examples of the trend of intellectual activity. The 
readiness of the general government and of many State legis- 
latures to encourage surveys and bureaus, the establishment 
of museums of natural history, and the support of explora- 
tions illustrate this tendency. Even theology feels the in- 
fluence. The ancient and sacred proverb has been redis- 
covered, — the letter killeth and the spirit maketh alive. I 
will go only to the edge of this disputed territory and shelter 
my own opinions behind those of a learned and devout pre- 
late of the English Church (Bishop Westcott), whose words 
are these : " No one can believe more firmly than I do that 
we are living in a time of revelation, and that the teachings 
of physical science are to be for us what Greek literature was 
in the twelfth century." Contrast this assertion with that 
of Andover when a famous scholar insisted that the heavens 
and earth were made in six days of twenty-four hours; and 
when the college pulpit in New Haven advocated the same 
doctrine, — and this within the remembrance of your speaker. 
Fifty years ago, the word science in a discourse like this 
would be restricted to physical and natural science. Mathe- 
matics would perhaps be admitted into the sacred circle. It 
was not uncommon to hear that " a professor of science " was 
wanted, by which it was meant that someone was wanted 
who could teach natural history, chemistry, geology, and 
physics. Now the word science is properly, I wish we could 
say generally, used as equivalent to exact knowledge, classi- 
fied, compared, recorded, and made public. Consequently 
we hear of the sciences of language, archaeology, history, 



REMEMBRANCES 149 

economics, politics, music, as well as of theology, comparative 
religion, ethics, diplomacy, administration, and of manifold 
departments of medicine. Men used to speak of science as 
if it were caviare, relished only by exceptional tastes. A 
scientific man was dry as dust. He was laughed at and per- 
haps despised by the business man who wondered why such 
devotion was not directed to " something practical," some- 
thing useful. Members of legislative bodies did not hesitate 
to say that they favoured " practical " appropriations, but 
that the government could do nothing for science. All this 
has changed. Great departments in Washington, like those 
of agriculture, geology, natural history, geodesy, astronomy, 
ethnology, promote abstract as well as applied science. Not 
a few of the separate States act in a kindred spirit. The 
pulpit, no longer speaking of science in derogatory tones, is 
almost ready to say that science is the handmaid of religion. 
The most widely circulated newspapers and other periodicals 
have scientific articles. Nature books are a new branch of 
bibliography. All this, in the last analysis, indicates a desire 
on the part of all thoughtful men among the public at large, 
to ascertain the truth, — to employ such agencies as will elimi- 
nate error, get rid of misapprehensions and unfounded tradi- 
tions, and verify assertions. It means the promotion of ac- 
curacy not only in weighing and measuring, but likewise in 
thinking, in speaking, and in writing. Emancipation from 
the slavery of superstition and unverified traditions follows 
as a matter of course. I have held in my hand a coin, sup- 
posed to be silver, which was once circulated in China and 
received innumerable stamps upon its face, as endorsement 
of its value, when the token passed from hand to hand. At 
length a harder blow struck through the face and revealed the 
fact that the coin was not of silver, but of some base metal 
plated to look like silver. In like manner many a well en- 
dorsed tenet has yielded to the hammer of truth. 

Fifty years ago (more in England than in this country), 



150 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

there was an endeavour to provoke a discussion between the 
lovers of science and the lovers of literature. Technical vo- 
cations were spoken of with contempt as " bread and butter 
studies." Inferior degrees were conferred upon those who 
pursued a modern curriculum in place of " the regular 
course." Not only has the spirit of accuracy been developed 
during the last decades, but the volume of established science 
has been enormously augmented. Let anyone compare the 
ascertained knowledge accumulated in any field with that 
which was found in the same field fifty years ago, by a com- 
parison of text-books, treaties, and encyclopaedias, and he will 
see what wealth has been accumulated. 

With the growth of the scientific spirit grows the love of 
truth, and with the love of truth in the abstract comes the 
love of accuracy in the concrete. If any man of science 
should change an iota of what he believed to be true, if he 
should say more or less to serve a purpose, he would deserve a 
place in the penitentiary of science and he probably would 
find it. It is even reasonable to expect that truth-telling will 
become as universal as the sway of science, — truth-telling 
even in letters of recommendation for official appointment and 
in the acknowledgment of books received by favour of the 
publishers. 

Closely connected with the spread of the scientific spirit 
has been the enunciation and the acceptance of the doctrine 
of evolution. Its conception was remote. Its birth was 
timidly announced. Its childhood was almost crushed by 
unkind treatment. Its adoption was slowly secured. At 
length, as an interpreter of the order of nature and of the 
progress of mankind, its authority is acknowledged, its 
triumph complete, and the prediction is boldly made, by one 
of the foremost exponents, that the doctrine will probably 
take its place, in the opinion of future generations, as the 
crowning achievement of the nineteenth century. Whether 
this be so or not, or whether some other principle, — the con- 



REMEMBRANCES 151 

servation of force for example, or the relation of electricity 
to light, or radio-activity, — is destined to such pre-eminence, 
the world is not likely to forget how an idea dimly perceived 
by the earliest Greek philosophers, repeated by the Roman 
poet, dormant during the long period of the middle ages and 
renaissance, has been distinctly formulated and carefully 
elaborated by the generation just passing from the stage. 
How like the bloom of the century plant, which, long kept 
back, suddenly bursts forth to the delight of every eye! It 
is both encouraging and discouraging to consider the slow 
processes by which truths are clearly formulated and gener- 
ally accepted. With our human chronology let us contrast 
the divine, and remember that to the all-seeing Eye a thou- 
sand years are but as yesterday. 

The study of evolution coincides with the introduction 
of biology, or the study of the origin and morphology of 
every kind of living organism. Natural history assumed a 
new form under the name of biology, and biology has been 
subdivided so that even the word itself is passing into dis- 
favour as the distinctive epithet of a single science. The 
richest fruits of biological study are to be seen in the science 
of medicine. Indeed, the growth of medical science, pro- 
moted by the discovery of anaesthesia and antisepsis, is per- 
haps the greatest boon, of a concrete and practical nature, 
that the world has ever received. The presidential dis- 
course, to which we listened yesterday, dwelt so forcibly on 
this theme, that I forego the pleasure of rehearsing the victory 
which science has won over pestilence and disease within 
the last two or three decades. One by one the ravages of 
cholera, diphtheria, yellow fever, and the plague have been 
checked. Tuberculosis begins to yield its direful grasp and 
the spread of malarial fever is controlled. The words of 
Dr. Osier, a great authority, are these: 

" The study of physiology and pathology, within the past 
half century, has done more to emancipate medicine from 



152 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

routine and the thraldom of authority, than all the work of 
all the physicians from Hippocrates to Jenner, — and we are 
yet but on the threshold." 

The growth of American universities must arrest the 
attention of all who look back over the last half century. 
Throughout the civilised world the changes have been very 
great, due especially to the introduction of laboratory methods 
in chemistry by the great teacher Liebig, and subsequently 
in physics and biology by other men of genius. The per- 
fection of astronomical instruments and of the microscope 
has had a similar influence. Exact surveys of the natural 
resources of civilised countries, and explorations in unciv- 
ilised lands, have opened the way to advances in geology 
and natural history. In the middle of the last century 
Americans perceived the scholarly leadership of Germany 
and sent scores of her brightest minds to Gottingen, 
Leipsic, Munich, and Berlin. The natural sciences attracted 
minds of a different order, and Gibbs, Gould, Rood, and 
many still living found places in the well-equipped and 
well-manned laboratories of the Continent. The followers 
of .ZEsculapius, true to the traditions of Epidaurus and 
Salerno, worshipped in the shrines of Paris and Vienna. 
England perceived the necessity of enlarging and supplement- 
ing her ancient universities, — sources of our earliest academic 
traditions, — and the parliamentary commissions on university 
reorganisation and on technical instruction prepared the way 
for great advances, both in classical studies and in mod- 
ern science. America felt these influences and profited by 
them. 

Within the period that we are considering our country- 
men have come to recognise the true significance of uni- 
versity work, as distinguished from collegiate discipline, and 
instruction has been provided in many departments of science 
and letters, quite apart from the courses of professional 
schools, and more advanced than those of the college. There 



REMEMBRANCES 153 

are fifteen or twenty places in this country at the present 
time where ample endowments enable the authorities to 
develop laboratories and seminaries for the guidance of grad- 
uate students. Simultaneously with this development there 
has been in many places a complete reorganisation of colleg- 
iate work. While its disciplinary character is maintained, 
very many subjects of study are allowed in the college cur- 
riculum, and consequently a great deal of freedom of choice 
is permitted. It does not appear that the undergraduates 
receive better instruction than they received in the earlier 
days; it does not appear that the bachelors of to-day are 
better qualified for life than they were in the early part of 
the last century; but it is obvious that the manifold require- 
ments of modern society have been advantageously met by 
courses of instruction which lead up to the modern pursuits, 
as the old classical curriculum led naturally to the study 
of law and theology. Two gains are doubtless permanent; 
first, elective courses or the choice between " groups " of 
undergraduate studies; and, second, the rapidly increasing 
recognition of the value of " liberal education," as antecedent 
to higher and special studies and as a generous and enviable 
preparation for the duties of a business life. Closely con- 
nected with the growth of universities, libraries and labora- 
tories, well equipped and well manned, have rapidly been 
developed. 

In the college fields there is still an ample place for 
the maintenance of religious influence, and for the giving of 
such religious instruction as accords with the views of those 
who support the establishments. But the university fields, 
with one noteworthy exception, are free from ecclesiastical 
influences, although voluntary attendance upon religious 
meetings is encouraged, and, through the Christian associ- 
ations and other agencies, religious life is promoted. 

The higher education of any country depends upon the 
lower. Consequently it is a matter of great satisfaction to 



154 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

observe that during the last half century public schools have 
been introduced in every State of the Union, and that the 
education of the people in primary and secondary schools is 
everywhere provided for. The great problem what to do 
for. the negro race still exercises the minds of wise and 
thoughtful people. 

Now comes this cry for research. It is not a felicitous 
term. It has no exact equivalent in other tongues. It would 
be better if we could employ the more cumbrous phrase, 
advancement and diffusion of knowledge, as Smithson said; 
or of learning, as Lord Bacon said. But no serious harm 
is done so long as it is understood that we are not re-search- 
ing, — that is, searching again, like the thrifty housekeeper, 
for a pearl that has been lost, — but are endeavouring to add 
new truths to the stores that mankind has accumulated dur- 
ing the slow process of historic development. Many young 
scholars are misled by the charm of a word, — it is to them 
like " Mesopotamia," — and when they say that research is 
to be their vocation, without having in mind any inquiry that 
they wish to follow, it is best to advise them to search the 
Scriptures until they know what fields are well tilled, what 
harvests already garnered. Nevertheless, with one voice, 
the intellectual world must joyfully acknowledge that the 
provision of munificent funds for the assistance of scientific 
inquiry, by many wise and munificent benefactors, and the 
willingness of universities to allow large freedom for invest- 
igation to those who are qualified, are among the finest 
fruits of American culture. Investigation is the watchword 
of the twentieth century, cried upon the towers of every 
university, — investigation not iconoclastic and destructive, 
leading to the spread of agnosticism and intellectual anarchy, 
but constructive, up-building, invigorating, cherishing all 
that man has learned from nature and from his own ex- 
perience, while removing the incrustations imposed by ignor- 
ance and bigotry. Back of all that man has learned are the 



REMEMBRANCES 155 

fields which knowledge has not penetrated, and as to which 
the voice of humanity can only utter Credo. 

There are still other topics upon which I am prepared to 
comment, but the time does not permit. I will simply 
mention them. The provision of higher educational ad- 
vantages for women is a very great advance in modern 
civilisation. The contributions they are making to historical, 
philosophical, and biological sciences exhibit a high degree of 
excellence. The establishment of scientific periodicals, con- 
taining the original contributions of American investigators, 
indicates the inquisitiveness and the fertility of our scholars, 
— but unfortunately the note of jealousy and rivalry reveals 
the fact that the most highly educated persons in this country 
are not exempt from the infirmities of human nature. In- 
creased attention to physical culture and to the laws of 
hygiene has rescued students, both men and women, from 
the looks, the habits, and the ailments which were formerly 
regarded as characteristic of those who cultivated their 
intellects. Stooping shoulders and sallow faces are no 
longer in vogue. Some intelligent observers from England 
have lately expressed the apprehension that we are developing 
a feminine species of man, as other observers have suggested 
that a masculine variety of women will be the fruit of co- 
education. The answer to the first of these suggestions is 
found in the vigour with which all manly sports are carried 
on, and in the endurance and bravery shown by young 
Americans when circumstances call them to the front. The 
answer to the other apprehension is found in the matrimonial 
statistics which are published from time to time. 

Within the period we are considering, many new subjects 
have been brought into the academic schedules, an important 
example being the modern languages. A liberal education 
is not now complete unless it includes a knowledge of French 
and German. Much attention is given to Anglo-Saxon and 
early English; but it is not evident that the powers of ex- 



156 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

pression, by pen and voice, are as well developed as they were 
in the days of " composition," and " declamation," when 
debating societies like those of Yale College " Linonia " and 
the " Brothers in Unity," afforded abundant and attractive 
opportunities for the presentation of essays and the delivery 
of speeches. We are in danger of losing the elements of 
repose, the quiet pursuit of knowledge, the friendship of 
books, the pleasures of conversation, and the advantages of 
solitude. It is stimulating to a company of students to have 
among them Kelvin, Brunetiere, Ehrlich, Jebb, and others 
of the most illustrious scholars of our times; but it is not 
well to drink too freely of intellectual champagne. The 
early deaths of Walker, Pepper, Goode, Rowland, and 
Adams should be a warning that the strenuous life may be 
very useful, but it may be very short. A few days ago Mr. 
Bates reminded his fellow congressmen that the mortality 
of the 57th Congress was greater in proportion than it was 
in the Spanish war. We seem to have adopted as a national 
motto, says the speaker, that no country may long endure 
if the foundations are not laid deep in the material prosperity 
which comes from thrift, from business energy and enter- 
prise, and unsparing efforts. Let me supplement his warning 
by a prayer that the universities of our country may be the 
correctives of this whirl. Within academic walls, may their 
serene Highnesses, philosophy, literature, and science, reign 
forever in tranquillity, and to their lessons may the weary and 
busy resort for refreshment and recreation. 

Half a century ago, in a ringing discourse, a distinguished 
orator looking westward raised the cry: "Barbarism the 
first danger." 1 The stream of immigration was beginning 
to bring to the Atlantic shores hosts of immigrants, and in the 
mind of this acute observer, this involved a tendency to 
social decline. " Already," in his opinion, " a very large 

1 Rev. Dr. Horace Bushnell before the American Home Missionary 
Society. 



REMEMBRANCES 157 

portion of the western community are so far gone in igno- 
rance as to make a pride of it and even to decry education 
as an over-genteel accomplishment. The society transplanted 
by emigration cannot carry its roots with it. Education must 
for a long time be imperfect in degree and partial in extent." 
" There is no literary atmosphere breathing through the 
forests or across the prairies. The colleges, if any they have, 
are only rudimentary beginnings and the youth a raw com- 
pany of woodsmen.'' " These semi-barbarians, the immi- 
grants," he says, " are continually multiplying their numbers. 
Ere long there is reason to fear they will be scouring, in 
populous bands, over the vast territories of Oregon and 
California, to be known as the pasturing tribes, the wild 
hunters and robber-clans of the western hemisphere, Amer- 
ican Moabites, Arabs, and Edomites." 

How strange this sounds! How different would be the 
note of this orator of 1847 if he were able to speak to us 
in 1904! Behold this great valley, from the Alleghenies to 
the Rocky Mountains, filled with prosperous towns, with 
public schools everywhere established, with colleges and uni- 
versities taking rank with the best in the country, with 
churches well maintained in every community, and with civic 
order, social happiness, mercantile honesty, and general thrift 
everywhere prevalent. Let this town of Madison, with its 
capitol, its university, and its historical society, stand out 
as a conspicuous example of what has been done in many 
places for the promotion of education and religion, the bul- 
warks of society. 

My theme was "looking backward." My speech is made. 
May I have your attention for a moment more, — for looking 
around and looking forward. 

I look around and behold a beautiful site which nature 
has adorned with all the charms of an inland landscape. As 
we drew near by an evening train, the dome of the capitol 
on one hill, the dome of the university on the other, shining 



158 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

with a thousand lights, made known that law and order 
on the one eminence, science and religion on the other, were 
the guardians of the State, — friends, allies, watchmen, 
heralds. I see these convenient halls, well equipped with 
the apparatus of instruction and investigation, — chief among 
them the library. I meet the men who are the interpreters 
of nature and of history. I know their distinction and their 
fame. I hear of the alumni excelling in all the walks of 
life. All this, I remember, is the achievement of fifty years. 
I look forward, and my sight grows dim. I dare not 
prophesy. But as I recall the words of that eloquent inaug- 
ural of yesterday, I share the hope, the confidence, and the 
optimism of your distinguished leader, believing that this, 
the university of the State, — this, the university of the people, 
— will be one of the most successful leaders of science and 
education among the many institutions of our land. Mr. 
President, I envy you; I echo your words; I endorse every 
sentence that I recall; I share your aspirations. I believe 
in your strength and I pray that beneath the guidance of 
Providence, the State of Wisconsin, — its administrators, its 
legislators, and its people, — may continue to foster, enlarge, 
and enrich their great institution, so that its benefits may 
reach every one of the inhabitants and its fruits be dis- 
tributed in every portion of our land, for the healing of the 
nation. 



THE RELATIONS OF YALE TO 
SCIENCE AND LETTERS 



RELATIONS OF YALE TO SCIENCE AND LETTERS 

The Bi-Centennial Celebration of Yale University 
took place in the week of October 22d, 1901. During 
the successive assemblies of several days, addresses were 
delivered on the Relations of Yale to Theology, Law, 
Medicine and Education. The subject of "The Re- 
lations of Yale to Science and Letters " was assigned to 
me. 



THE RELATIONS OF YALE TO SCIENCE AND LETTERS 

In the mediaeval convents, from which our academic usages 
are derived, there were annalists who noted the passing 
events. Dry and meagre are such records, — dry and meagre 
will our annals seem unless we see in them the working of 
principles and methods during a period of two centuries. 
It will be my endeavour to set forth the relations of Yale to 
science and letters in such a way that with historic insight 
you may discover the tendency and the influence of the school 
in which we have been trained, and may thus appreciate its 
benefits more fully than ever before. I shall not follow 
closely the order of chronology, and under the circumstances 
of this address, I must omit the praise of many among the 
departed and among the living, honoured and beloved. Law, 
medicine, and theology must be avoided ; " it is so nominated 
in the bond." It will be good for each one of us to bear in 
mind the seven searching questions of an ancient critic, — 

Quis, Quid, Ubi, Quibus auxiliis, Cur, Quomodo, Quando, 

and to remember also that there is no process by which we 
can draw forth in forty minutes the rich vintages stored up 
in a period of forty lustrums. 

The Collegiate School of Connecticut began well; Yale 
College improved upon the Collegiate School; Yale Univer- 
sity is better than Yale College. The process has been that 
of evolution, not of revolution; unfolding, not cataclysmic; 
growth, and not manufacture ; heredity and environment, the 
controlling factors. What we are, we owe to our ancestry 
and our opportunities. Hence the relations of Yale to Letters 
and Science cannot be adequately treated without looking 

161 



1 62 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

outside the walls, as well as inside, — by considering the 
wilderness of Quinnipiac ; the dependence of the colony upon 
the mother country; the dicephalous State of Connecticut; 
the prosperous city of New Haven and its proximity to the 
great metropolis ; and especially by considering what has been 
going on in the macrocosm of literature and knowledge 
where we represent a microcosm. Such a survey I shall not 
attempt, for I must keep close bounds. Yet even brevity 
must not suppress the fact, — that among the original colonists 
of New Haven, the real progenitors of Yale College, were 
three broad-minded men of education, — John Davenport, a 
student of Oxford and a minister in London; Theophilus 
Eaton, the King's ambassador at the Court of Denmark; and 
Edward Hopkins, a merchant of enterprise and fortune, and 
an early benefactor of American learning. Their successors 
also, the men of 170 1, James Pierpont at the front, were 
worthy exponents of the ideas they had inherited ; they were 
the wisest, broadest, and most learned men of this region in 
that day. Liberal ideas were then in the advance, and thank 
God, are not yet in the background. 

New England brought from Old England the customs, the 
studies, the graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, not those of 
Scotland or France or Germany. The exotic germs were 
nurtured by Harvard for more than sixty years before the 
times were ripe for a second college in this region. Harvard 
instructors, laws, courses, phrases, were then adopted by the 
Collegiate School of Connecticut, and our alma mater began 
her life as a child of the new Cambridge and a grandchild of 
the old. " Harvard has nourished Yale eighty years kindly 
ordered in Providence," are the words of President Stiles. 
Yale has never ceased to be grateful for this noble ancestry, 
nor broken the chain of historic continuity. Yale does not 
forget that an honourable pedigree is its priceless possession, 
and delights to-day to honour its ancestry. 

The seventeenth century was not the most brilliant period 



RELATIONS OF YALE TO SCIENCE 163 

of university education in the mother country. The functions 
of universities had been usurped by colleges. Their scope 
was restricted; their regulations rigid and petty. Science 
and letters were subordinate to logic and grammar, and the 
maintenance of orthodoxy. Nevertheless, the new school 
made the best of it, — and while still without a fixed habita- 
tion or a name, acquired both influence and reputation. It 
began with books, not bricks; with teachers, the best that 
could be had; and with ideas in respect to intellectual disci- 
pline which soon bore fruit in the service of church and state. 

The division between our first and second centuries, cor- 
responding with the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of 
our era, is not simply determined by the calendar. There 
are two periods to be considered as well as two centuries, 
each deriving its characteristics from the spirit of the age. 
In the first of these, our fathers went through the good old 
colony times of dependence upon England; the Revolution; 
the establishment of constitutional government; and the en- 
largement of national life and hope. It was the period too 
when a free church was to be established in a free state, when 
Christianity was to be promoted without the rule of hierarchy. 
The business of a college was to train two sets of leaders, 
those who would develop and administer republican govern- 
ment under new conditions, and those who would be ministers 
of the word of God among a Christian people separated from 
the establishment. For scholastic discipline the books and 
methods approved in the mother country and adopted in 
Harvard were the only instruments. Such words as letters 
and science were not in their vocabulary. Religion and law, 
or as they said the church and state, were the dominant con- 
cerns of patriot and sage. 

Days of privation, anxiety, dispute, apprehension and ex- 
periment introduced a time of stability, prosperity and union, 
— years of plenty after years of want, — and the second 
century opened with courage equal to opportunities. It is 



i6 4 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

true that the ideas of original research, of experiment and 
observation, now so familiar, were hardly perceptible, but 
science had begun its triumphal march, and the humanities, 
in a broad sense, were destined to engage more and more the 
attention of educated men. 

In the first decade, our record of " the noble living and the 
noble dead " includes the name of one who was trained by- 
alma mater for more than provincial usefulness and fame, Dr. 
Jared Eliot, who like the sages of antiquity, had the cure of 
souls and the care of bodies. A physician as well as a 
presbyter, living in a country town, preaching constantly, 
traversing a wide district on errands of mercy, he showed the 
qualities of an original investigator. He could ask hard 
questions and proceed to search for their answers; he would 
make no assertions that were not based upon observation or 
experiment, and he submitted his conclusions, by the printing 
press, to the scrutiny of the world. These are his sayings: 
" Entering on the borders of terra incognita I can advance 
not one step forward, but as experience, my only pole-star, 
shall direct. I am obliged to work as poor men live, from 
hand to mouth, and as light springs up before me, as I ad- 
vance." Again: "As all theory not founded upon matter 
of fact and that is not the result of experience, is vague or 
uncertain, therefore it is with great diffidence that I have 
offered anything in way of theory which is only conjectural 
and shall always take it as a favour to be corrected and set 
right." 

It is not too mucK to claim that he made the first contri- 
bution, from this land of iron and gold, to the science of 
metallurgy in a memoir entitled, " The art of making very 
good if not the best iron from black sea sand ; " and he was a 
century or more in advance of his times in the promotion of 
scientific agriculture, as anyone may see by looking up the 
six tracts, which he published in quick succession, and after- 
wards collected in a volume, on " Field Husbandry in New 



RELATIONS OF YALE TO SCIENCE 165 

England." His science did not drown his humour and he has 
left this short biography of his laboratory assistant, who was 
sceptical about results and needed stimulant : " He being a 
sober man (says Eliot), who could use strong drink with 
moderation and temperance, I promised him if he could pro- 
duce a bar of iron from the sand, I would send him a bottle 
of rum." Such in colonial days was the spirit that promoted 
research. 

No wonder that Benjamin Franklin found Eliot out and 
wrote him affectionately, " I remember with pleasure the 
cheerful hours I enjoyed last winter in your company, and I 
would with all my heart give any ten of the thick old folios 
that stand on the shelves before me, for a little book of the 
stories you then told with so much propriety and humour." 
Poor Richard, when he ranked ten folios below the wit and 
wisdom of his friend in Guilford, paid a compliment to the 
collegiate school of Connecticut, but he had not in mind the 
folios with which the college was founded. 

If it be true that Eliot was chosen a member of the Royal 
Society of London, the distinction is very great, for only 
David Humphreys, among Yalensians, had the like honour 
before the recent triumvirate, Dana, Newton, and Gibbs. 

Of Jonathan Edwards, the philosopher and theologian, I 
have no right to speak, but he must not be exiled from men 
of letters, especially since it is customary in recent years to 
call him by the name of one of the most illustrious of epic 
poets. His contemporaries placed no limits on their praise, 
and even wrote on his tombstone Secundus nemini mortalium, 
thus transcending the well-known Florentian epitaph, nulli 
aetatis suae comparandus. 

His grandson, with pardonable piety, declares that he 

"in one little life the Gospel more 
Disclosed, than all earth's myriads kenned before," 

and then, alarmed by his own eulogy, he adds, " The reader 



166 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

will consider this proposition as poetically strong, but not as 
literally accurate." 

Edwards may be called a poet suppressed. His writings 
are often noteworthy for the graceful language in which 
refined thoughts have expression, and although no rhymes 
or verses of his are extant, some passages have a Miltonic 
ring. The most orthodox among us may hazard the opinion 
that his visions of the future state are fitly classified as works 
of the imagination. 

Many years ago this extraordinary man was likened by Dr. 
Samuel Osgood of New York to Dante, and this comparison 
has been recently amplified in two brilliant addresses by Dr. 
Allen and Dr. Gordon in the commemoration of Edwards at 
Northampton, a century and a half after his banishment. A 
cooler critic has called him a great glacial boulder, one of 
the two huge literary boulders deposited in New England 
thought by the receding ice of the eighteenth century. These 
striking terms may excite a smile, but they are not uttered 
carelessly, nor are they a misfit. The logic of Edwards is 
like a rock, fixed as those masses of stone upon yonder hill 
where the regicides took refuge, hard to move and not easily 
broken up. Cotton Mather was his fellow traveller upon 
the ice fields which once covered New JEngland, leaving 
scratches and furrows on many an eminence. 

It is pleasanter to think of the flaming preacher as the 
Dante of New England. His language often glows with 
fire ; his words burn ; his fancy carries him to the borders of 
the Inferno and to the gates of Paradise. Nor is this all we 
can say. Our Dante had his Beatrice, and the words in 
which he speaks of her may well be placed in a parallel with 
those which narrate the love of the Italian for the daughter of 
Folco. Hear the earliest record that has come down to us 
of Dante's precocious and enduring love. " She was perhaps 
eight years old, very comely for her age and very gentle and 
pleasing in her actions, with ways and words more serious 



RELATIONS OF YALE TO SCIENCE 167 

and modest than her youth required; and beside this, with 
features very delicate and well formed, and further so full 
of beauty and of sweet winsomeness that she was declared 
by many to be like an angel." " Although a mere boy, Dante 
received her sweet image in his heart with such appreciation 
that from that day forward it never departed thence while 
he lived." 

Four centuries after Dante, Jonathan Edwards made this 
note in respect to the New England maiden of fourteen years, 
who became his wife. " They say there is a young lady in 
New Haven who is beloved by that Great Being who made 
and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in 
which the Great Being comes to her and fills her mind with 
exceeding great delight. . . . She is of a wonderful sweet- 
ness, calmness and universal benevolence, especially after this 
Great God has manifested Himself to her mind. She will 
sometimes go about from place to place, singing sweetly, and 
seems to be always full of joy and pleasure, and no one knows 
for what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and 
groves, and seems to have some One invisible always con- 
versing with her." 

Dante and Edwards alike in love, alike in their spiritual 
fervour, and in their impressive imagery, were alike in exile, 
both were driven from their homes, both died among stran- 
gers, both have been honoured with increasing reverence by 
the descendants of those who rejected them. 

In his youth Edwards showed a noteworthy proclivity 
toward the study of nature. An article is extant which 
he wrote at the age of twelve, recording his observations 
upon spiders and displaying the same qualities as those of 
Lubbock and Maeterlinck. Moreover, his undergraduate 
notebook gives evidence that his mind was alert for knowl- 
edge in other fields, and that he could ask searching questions 
in physics, including electricity, meteorology, physical geog- 
raphy, and vegetation. One who was familiar with these 



168 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

precocious memoranda remarks that if they were written, as 
supposed, between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, " they 
indicate an intellectual prodigy which has no parallel." If 
he had been taught to use the lens and the metre as he 
used the lamp, he might have stood among the great 
interpreters of nature, — the precursor of Franklin, Rum- 
ford and Rowland. 

He was nurtured by theological dialectics, and he excelled 
not in physics, but in metaphysics, so, to-day, instead of 
honouring him as a leader in literature or science, we can 
only acknowledge with filial reverence his wonderful influ- 
ence upon the opinions and characters of six generations. 
The laws of intellectual inheritance are obscure, and the 
influences he has handed down cannot be measured. It is, 
however, noteworthy that three of his descendants occupied 
the presidential chair of Yale for nearly sixty years; many 
others have been among our teachers; indeed there are few 
years in our second century in which the Faculty has not 
included one or more of his posterity. I have read the 
printed verses of seven of his descendants, — no small part 
coloured (may I be pardoned for saying so) with the cerulean 
hue of religious fervour. 

It is interesting to dwell upon the names of Edwards and 
Eliot as men of more than provincial fame, because the 
number of Yalensians who can be regarded as contributors 
to literature and science prior to the Revolution is small. 
The historian, Tyler, has taken the year 1765 as the close 
of the sterile period, when colonial isolation was ended and 
American literature began to be worthy of the name. Before 
that time neither Harvard nor any place in this land has 
much to speak of; yet afterwards, until the close of the 
eighteenth century, the product is almost as scanty. A recent 
paper enumerates the texts by which the youthful minds 
were disciplined. 1 Although the manuals and the methods 
1 By Professor Schwab. 



RELATIONS OF YALE TO SCIENCE 169 

were not inspiring, they encouraged discrimination and that 
power which used to be called ratiocination, " generation of 
judgments from others actually in our understanding." You 
may say that this is not " experimental science nor literary 
culture," and you say well. The ore, indeed, may have been 
extracted, by the Eliot process, from black sand, but the 
Bessemer process had not been invented for turning iron into 
steel. Nevertheless, we have the assurance of a recent Massa- 
chusets critic, 2 that the highest literary activity of the later 
eighteenth century had its origin at Yale College. 

Our elder brethren of the eighteenth century, with whom 
most of us have no more acquaintance than we get from 
the hortus siccus of a biographical dictionary, were men quite 
as intellectual as men of our day. When their acquaintance 
is cultivated and when the minute incidents of their lives 
and their quaint characteristics are sought out, they are as 
interesting as our contemporaries. Let us cease to regard 
them as mummies. The story of Manasseh Cutler is a 
succession of romantic incidents. Bishop Berkeley's transi- 
tory interest in the college, and his permanent influence upon 
it, is a captivating record. Jeremiah Dummer, little more 
than a name to most of us, was called by Charles Chauncey 
one of the three greatest New Englanders. The story of 
Liberty Hall, where William Livingston lived with his 
charming family of daughters, might be commended as the 
basis of a novel to the author of " Hugh Wynne." Rector 
Clap, the fighting rector, led a life full of racy incidents, and 
certainly we have no more picturesque character on the roll 
than Dr. Stiles, now re-introduced by Professor Dexter to 
the society of which he was once a distinguished ornament, — 
that extraordinary polyhistor to whom all knowledge was 
attractive, all tongues appetising, and all events pregnant. 

As we recall the writers of influence and distinction among 
our brethren, we cannot fail to observe the dominant religious 
2 Professor Barrett Wendell. 



170 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

spirit which most of them show, and it may be well at the 
outset to remind you that the identity of theology and poetry 
is not peculiar to New England. The earliest biographer of 
Dante declared that " theology was nothing else than the 
poetry of God." " Not only is poetry theology, but theology 
is poetry," says Boccaccio, and then he adds that if these 
words of his merit but little faith, " the reader may rely on 
Aristotle, who affirms that he had found that poets were the 
first theologians." Judged by this standard, we might find a 
good deal of poetry in our Yalensian products, during the 
eighteenth century, but by the criteria of modern scholarship, 
not much that would be commended by Matthew Arnold, 
not much that our own anthologist would cull for pres- 
ervation. 

Before the middle of our first century there appeared in 
New York a volume containing seven hundred lines of verse 
entitled " Philosophical Solitude ; or the choice of a rural 
life: — by a gentleman educated at Yale College." This 
anonymity did not long conceal the authorship of William 
Livingston, one of the brightest students of his time, dis- 
tinguished in many ways, — once as " the Presbyterian law- 
yer," and later as Governor of New Jersey and a member of 
the Constitutional Convention. His brother, also a Yalen- 
sian, was a signer of the Declaration. The verses show 
the influence of Pope, and among other points of interest in 
them, are allusions to the writers whom this young graduate 
desired as his intimate friends in the rural life he intended 
to lead. 

In the Revolutionary War two of our brethren, while 
acting as chaplains, were composers of patriotic songs. Many 
years later the inspiration of the muses descended upon a 
number of recent graduates, who became known as " the 
Hartford wits," — " four bards with Scripture names," John, 
Joel, David and Lemuel, any one of whom could produce an 
epic as surely, if not as quickly, as the writer of to-day would 



RELATIONS OF YALE TO SCIENCE 171 

compose an article for the Yale Review, The group included 
John Trumbull, a precocious youth fitted for college at the 
age of seven, whose burlesque treatment of the Revolutionary 
War, called " McFingal," ran through thirty unauthorised 
editions ; the versatile Joel Barlow, author of " Hasty Pud- 
ding," who worked for half his life, we are told, upon the 
" Columbiad," having in the interval of his engagements 
" adapted Watts' Psalms to the use of the Connecticut 
churches and added several original hymns " ; David Hum- 
phreys, who translated a French tragedy, entitled the 
" Widow of Malabar," and composed several ambitious 
poems ; and finally, Lemuel Hopkins, an honourary graduate. 
The Harvard historian whom I have already quoted has said 
that at the time the Hartford wits wrote, no Harvard man 
had produced literature half as good as theirs. 

Perhaps one may, without offence, at this late day, refer to 
the ponderosity of this early poetry. " McFingal " and 
" Hasty Pudding " and the " Progress of Dulness " would 
hardly be found amusing in these days, although they were 
mirthful. " Greenfield Hill " is hard reading. The serious- 
ness of such subjects as the " Conquest of Canaan," the 
" Vision of Columbus," the " Anarchiad," the " The Last 
Judgment, a Vision," was characteristic of the times and was 
adequately sustained by the serious treatment to which these 
themes were subjected. Indeed, in this period, lofty ideals 
were entertained, and long and elaborate poems were so 
naturally attempted that a commencement orator (as late as 
1826) delivered a discourse on "some of the considerations 
which should influence an epic or a tragic writer in the choice 
of an era." The spirit of Hebrew poetry hovered over our 
elms, more constant than Calliope or Euterpe. It suggested 
dramas which have died, it found expression in hymns which 
have lived. I could name five of these. Brethren, answer 
the question of Emerson, — 



172 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

" Have you eyes to find the five 
Which five hundred did survive ? " 

At the beginning of our second century, we come upon the 
name of John Pierpont, preacher, patriot, advocate of every 
cause which would improve his fellow men, whose verses are 
at the front of two recent anthologies. Bryant just missed 
enrolment among us. He took a dismissal from Williams 
in order to enter Yale, but he did not fulfil his purpose. 
Fitz-Greene Halleck, a native of this county, did not go to 
any college. Not long after Pierpont, the two Hillhouses 
were graduated. The elder brother, James Abraham Hill- 
house, was author of " Percy's Masque " and three other 
dramas, the last of which, entitled " The Judgment, a Vis- 
ion," was intended by the author to present " such a view of 
the last grand spectacle as seemed most susceptible of poetical 
embellishment." He was a gifted writer of fine taste and lofty 
ideals; and his writings were most highly esteemed by the 
generation to which he belonged. His name is dear to us 
as the poet of Sachem'c Wood, the beautiful park at the 
head of Hillhouse Avenue, — the park and the avenue alike 
commemorating his distinguished father, to whom the city 
of Elms is beyond estimate indebted. For East Rock and 
West Rock he suggested the names of " Sassacus " and 
" Regicide." 

Later came Brainard, cut down in his youth, and brought 
to life at the call of Whittier ; and William Croswell, son of 
the rector of Trinity Church, one of the most cultivated of 
churchmen, whose poems, ten years after he died, were edited 
by Bishop Coxe. In the class of 1820 were two men whom 
we honour for so many other reasons that we forget their 
poetry, — Woolsey and Bacon. As the first quarter of the 
century closed, the college diploma was given to James G. 
Percival, that unique, eccentric, impracticable combination of 
science and literature, learned to superfluity, versatile to in- 
constancy, loving nature, books, words, yet disliking men as 



RELATIONS OF YALE TO SCIENCE 173 

he met them; geographer, geologist, linguist, lexicographer, 
poet, with much of the distinction and a fair amount of the 
infelicity which characterises genius. His metrical studies 
are remarkable illustrations of the laws of verse. Next 
came N. P. Willis, graceful in prose and verse, remembered 
by some for his Biblical lyrics, and by others for lines in 
praise of New Haven elms; and soon, Ray Palmer, whose 
sacred song has been translated into twenty languages, and 
sung in Arabic, Tamil, Tahitian, Mahratta and Chinese, as 
well as in the tongues of Christendom. George H. Colton, 
one of a family that has cultivated the muses, published a 
poem on Tecumseh soon after he graduated in 1 840. Twenty 
years later came Weeks and Sill, — Weeks, who died before 
he had stretched his wings for the flights of which he was 
capable; and Sill, bright and beloved Sill, whose verses, col- 
lected since his death, exhibit, as do his essays and letters, an 
intellect strong, unconventional and suggestive. These are 
not all the departed whom we may hold in honourable 
remembrance. 

It is no part of my plan to say much about the living, but 
there are two writers entitled to special mention, — Finch, the 
author of stanzas which have brightened the fame of Nathan 
Hale; and Stedman, anthologist and historian of Victorian 
poetry, the poet of yesterday and to-morrow, the youth who 
won his laurels as an undergraduate writer in the Yale 
Literary Magazine; the singer who wears them still upon 
his frosty brow. 

The comparison has been made between the graduates of 
Harvard and of Yale, and the long and brilliant list of histo- 
rians and poets of Cambridge has been contrasted with the 
shorter and less famous list of New Haven. Our friends in 
the East will doubtless attribute something, as is their wont, 
to the proximity of Boston, a beacon set upon the hill, a port 
of entry for the culture of other lands, where the Athenaeum, 
still foremost among the society libraries of the United States, 



174 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

was an inspiring resort, close akin to the London Library, 
giving to men of letters both sustenance and stimulant. It 
is, however, probable that the difference between the two col- 
leges is due to the fact that in Eastern Massachusetts, during 
the last century, dogmatic theology has been neglected and the 
ablest intellects have been free to engage in literary produc- 
tion. Perhaps this is true. I do not know. We may claim 
this, however, without making any comparison, that Yalen- 
sians from the beginning were brought up in obedience to 
" Duty, stern daughter of the voice of God"; that the college 
was founded for the fitting of men to serve the church and 
state, and that the graduates of Yale, whether famous or un- 
known, are devoted to the service of their country and show 
that they have been trained to think, to reason, to write and 
to speak with freedom and with force. We can every one of 
us recall classmates and friends, men we have heard and men 
we have heard of, village Hampdens or mute inglorious 
Miltons; — and we can also recall those who have shown, 
at the bar and on the bench, in the cabinet and in diplomacy, 
those qualities which under other conditions would have 
made them orators and authors. The point I make is this, 
that the Yale training has tended to the development of 
strength rather than of grace. " I thank God," said a 
famous preacher who studied in both places, " that I struck 
no literary roots at Yale and no theological roots at Har- 
vard." " I thank God, too," said one of his teachers at New 
Haven. 

It is certainly true that hundreds of the graduates of Yale 
have been accurate and forcible writers, who have known 
what to say and how to say it ; and that they have in this way 
rendered an incalculable service to the country, far and wide, 
even though we admit that, under the pressure of strenuous 
life, but few of them have shown those literary qualities 
which are usually evoked where writers and critics come in 
close relation to one another, as they do in cities and in large 



RELATIONS OF YALE TO SCIENCE 175 

universities. Long ago, Bishop Fraser said of the United 
States, that the people were the most generally educated, if 
not the most highly educated, people in the world. Some- 
thing like this we may say of the Yale alumni, — if they 
number few men of genius, they number many men of 
talents, usefulness and power; if there are none who are 
equal to Tennyson and Schiller and Victor Hugo, there are 
many who have been the advocates of truth and the pro- 
moters of social reform, in terse and vigorous English. They 
have excelled in the pulpit and at the bar, and in the halls 
of legislation, so that without mentioning the names of men 
whom we have personally known, I will remind you of that 
long line of jurists and statesmen who were living near the 
beginning of our second century, William Samuel Johnson, 
Pelatiah Webster, John C. Calhoun, James Kent, Jeremiah 
Mason, and that constellation of New England theologians, 
an innumerable host, from Edwards to Taylor. 

Professor Kingsley was called the Addison of America, 
and he had such wit, knowledge and grace as might have 
given him distinction in literary composition if he had so 
directed his energy ; but he was one of those " generally use- 
ful men " that this college produces, who held at one time 
what we should call four chairs. We should all be proud 
to claim, as the product of our alma mater, James Fenimore 
Cooper, but we cannot, for like Shelley from Oxford he was 
driven out because of a boyish misdemeanour. If we cannot 
claim Cooper, Theodore Winthrop is ours, — the essayist and 
novelist, whose posthumous fame shows what" was lost to 
letters when he died a patriot's death upon the field of battle. 
Long distant be the day when Yale will place among the 
stelligeri the name of Donald Grant Mitchell, historian and 
essayist, whose writings have awakened reveries in successive 
generations of Bachelors graduating from these walls, whose 
life has been to them a bright example of devotion to letters. 

In the second quarter of the nineteenth century the influ- 



176 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

ence of Coleridge is apparent. William Adams, Horace 
Bushnell, Lyman Atwater, William Watson Andrews, and 
Noah Porter are conspicuous examples of this infusion of 
idealism. Their writings are in evidence. The powerful 
imagination which produced " The Ancient Mariner " and 
" Christabel " had been directed to the transcendent study 
of the Infinite, and many who turned away from the most 
rigid tenets of Calvin, and from the severe interpretation 
of the Old Testament, were strengthened and guided by 
the philosopher of Highgate. 

Bushnell confessed greater indebtedness to " Aids to Re- 
flection " than to any other book save the Bible. Of this 
theological emancipator I am not called upon to speak, — of 
the gifted writer more than passing mention must be made. 
His sermons, addresses and essays always arrested the atten- 
tion and excited the imagination of those who heard and those 
who read them. For example, his estimate of Connecticut, 
his " Age of Homespun," indeed all the contents of his 
" Work and Play," and many parts of " Nature and the 
Supernatural," glow with life and fancy, and will be as good 
reading for our grandchildren as they were for our fathers. 
The incisive notes of his voice as I first heard it when an 
undergraduate still ring in my ears, — and his racy sentences, 
his inspiring and suggestive phrases, and the eloquence of his 
thoughts were even more impressive than his voice. The 
name of Horace Bushnell is a precious heirloom handed down 
from the Yale of the last century to the Yale of the present. 
He was an orator, a poet, a lover of nature, and of man, — 
fearless, original, persuasive, too liberal for the conservatives, 
too conservative for the liberals of that day, now honoured in 
both their schools. Horace Bushnell is the greatest of this 
theological group. Indeed I should place him, in genius, 
next to Jonathan Edwards. 

Not a few of our brethren have excelled in historical writ- 
ing. Stiles wrote a history of the exiled Judges, and Benja- 



RELATIONS OF YALE TO SCIENCE 177 

min Trumbull the history of Connecticut; Samuel Farmer 
Jarvis was designated historiographer of the Episcopal 
Church; Moses Coit Tyler is the historian of American 
literature; Andrew D. White is the defender of science 
versus bigotry, whose history should make us grateful that 
Yale has been one of the most important American agencies 
for the emancipation of the human intellect from ignorance 
and dogmatism; Charles L. Brace is the exponent of Gesta 
Christi; George P. Fisher, an honoured member of the 
Faculty for almost fifty years, stands in the foremost rank 
among the ecclesiastical historians of this country, and Leon- 
ard Bacon, the Puritan, always remarkable for clearness and 
vigour, whether religion or politics was his theme, is the 
author of discourses on the early days of New Haven, which 
remain unsurpassed in the field of local history. He was 
like a modern Isaiah, the trenchant defender of political 
righteousness. Stille's pamphlet, " How a Free People Con- 
duct a Long War," was one of the most inspiring products 
of the uprising for the Union ; and Schuyler's studies in Turk- 
istan and his essays in diplomacy are enduring memorials 
of another " all round man," observer, critic, traveller, essay- 
ist, historian, diplomatist, — good in whatever he undertook. 
Comparative philology was introduced among us by Josiah 
W. Gibbs, — but the chief impulse in this direction came from 
Salisbury, the first to teach Sanskrit in America. He recog- 
nised the ability and secured the services of one who was not 
a graduate, it is true, but an adopted son, whose honours are 
our honours, whose fame carries the name of Yale to every 
university of the Indo-European world, that illustrious 
scholar, William D. Whitney. We must remember that 
James Murdock in 1851 published a translation of the 
Peshito Syriac version of the New Testament; that Moses 
Stuart at an earlier day carried from New Haven to Andover, 
an enthusiastic, if not always accurate, devotion to Biblical 
literature; and that a learned and devoted scholar, Eli Smith, 



178 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

within sight of Mt. Lebanon, translated nearly all the Bible 
into Arabic, — as in later days Hiram Bingham translated it 
into one of the languages of the Pacific islands. 

Another interesting phase of philological study is shown in 
the attention given to the study of the languages of the North 
;American Indians. This began very early, when Sergeant, 
Brainerd, Spencer, and Edwards were engaged as mission- 
aries to the aborigines in Western Massachusetts and in Cen- 
tral New York. The philological importance of the Ameri- 
can tongue was recognised in recent days by James Hammond 
Trumbull, who with rare aptitudes for the elucidation of 
knotty problems, directed his attention to the Indian lan- 
guages of the Eastern States, and was soon acknowledged as 
foremost in that uninviting and perplexing field of inquiry. 
Before long we shall have his lexicon of the Natick Speech, 
so that he who will may cultivate the love of comparative 
literature by reading Eliot's Indian Bible. Daniel G. Brin- 
ton in other branches of aboriginal research has also won 
renown. 

An unusual manifestation of the love of letters is shown 
by the attention given during the last century to lexico- 
graphy. For a time Yale was a veritable storm-centre. 
Webster versus Worcester, and Worcester versus Webster 
were chieftains in this " Battle of the Books," and both 
authorities were graduates of Yale. Lately, Whitney, W. 
the Third, has taken rank with the best antecedents, and a 
score of co-operative Yalensians, many of them specialists, 
have been engaged in the improvement of the three great dic- 
tionaries. It is customary to laugh at the changes in spell- 
ing proposed by Noah Webster, and certainly some of the 
Johnsonese definitions which he propounded were mirth pro- 
voking, — ("sauce," for example), — but revised and im- 
proved by Goodrich, Porter, Kingsley and others, his dic- 
tionary holds its own. Its popularity was due in part, no 
doubt, to Webster's spelling book, of which the annual sale 



RELATIONS OF YALE TO SCIENCE 179 

at one time was twelve hundred thousand copies. By this 
primer a very great service was rendered to letters, — for it 
helped to counteract any tendency toward provincial or dia- 
lectic peculiarities among the heterogeneous people of the 
United States. May we not in this connection remember 
that, like a modern Cadmus, Morse gave an alphabet to the 
silent utterances of electricity, — now employed in wireless 
telegraphy. 

Apart from theology, philosophy has engaged the atten- 
tion of many of our ablest brethren. This is especially true 
of the time since Porter was called to the professorship which 
he held with conspicuous distinction for almost half a cen- 
tury, including the years of his presidency. A recent investi- 
gator has traced the influence of this able teacher, well versed 
in the modern writers of Germany, who made metaphysics 
interesting to those who were indifferent, and was at his best 
in the analysis of conflicting theories and in the detection 
of subtle errors. As a lawyer for the defence, he would 
have been the peer of Rufus Choate. Not a few of his 
pupils have been led through philosophy to pedagogics and 
are winning distinction in this field. 

This review would be incomplete if I did not mention the 
Yale Literary Magazine, which for more than three score 
years has kept up the love of literature among the under- 
graduates, and has furnished them with appreciative readers, 
critical enough and friendly enough for discipline. Many 
editorial writers have been trained by their service on this 
magazine, since William M. Evarts set the press in motion. 
Older Yalensians have had their opportunities in magazines 
of wider circulation, the Christian Spectator the New Eng- 
lander and the Yale Review, — not officially connected with 
the college, but supported by the faculty. 

The literary societies also, which, for more than a cen- 
tury, were maintained with vigour, seem to me to have been 
pne of the very best agencies for youthful discipline. The 



180 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

spontaneous efforts of young men, excited by the emulation 
of their comrades, and controlled by the friendly criticism of 
their peers, were admirable exercises for the development of 
the love of poetry, oratory, essay writing, and debate. 

One of the greatest services which this college has ren- 
dered to literature and science has been the preparation of an 
innumerable host of teachers and professors. The list is too 
long for recapitulation here, — but a few names must be 
recalled. The earliest was Jonathan Dickinson, first Presi- 
dent of Princeton, deemed in his time the peer of Edwards, 
whose immediate successors were likewise Yalensians. Next 
came Samuel Johnson, the friend of Berkeley, first President 
of Columbia University, and his more famous son, William 
Samuel Johnson, elected Provost of the University of Penn- 
sylvania, who succeeded to the presidency of Columbia, and 
stood in the first rank among the statesmen of the period just 
subsequent to the Revolution. From the Wheelocks of Dart- 
mouth to Sturtevant of Illinois, Chauvenet of St. Louis and 
Chapin of Beloit, the file leaders in our colleges have con- 
stantly been elected from Yale. At a recent date lived 
Thomas H. Gallaudet, pioneer in the instruction of deaf 
mutes, and Henry Barnard, ever to be associated with Horace 
Mann, as advocate, expounder and promoter of the American 
system of common schools. Nor can I forget Henry Durant, 
and the other graduates of this college, who went to the 
Pacific Coast, " with college on the brain," and planted in 
California the seeds of learning which now bear harvests of 
golden grain. A happy thought gave the name of Berkeley 
to the site near the Golden Gate, where an institution begun 
by our brothers fulfils the remarkable prophecies of Timothy 
Dwight, written in 1794: 

" All hail ! Thou Western World ! by heaven designed 
The example bright to renovate mankind! 
Soon shall thy sons across the mainland roam 
And claim on fair Pacific's shore a home. 



RELATIONS OF YALE TO SCIENCE 181 

" Where marshes teemed with death, shall meads unfold, 
Untrodden cliffs resign their stores of gold. 
Where slept perennial night, shall science rise, 
And new-born Oxfords cheer the evening skies ! " 

Let us turn from letters to science. As I scan the admin- 
istrative records, from the beginning onward, with the aid of 
our right well beloved and trustworthy archivists, the two 
Kingsleys and Dexter, when authority passes from one 
President to another, the balance is kept true. Pierson was 
an exponent of geometry and a defender of the faith, who 
wrote out lectures upon Physics, and dictated them to succes- 
sive classes ; Cutler's short service gives little indication of his 
attitude; Williams loved public life more than academic per- 
plexities ; Clap was a writer on ethical and astronomical sub- 
jects, — a student of the Bible, scarcely equalled, says his suc- 
cessor, in mathematics and physics by any man in America; 
Daggett, extremely orthodox, was scientific enough to warn 
his townsmen, scared by " the Dark Day," not to be alarmed 
nor " inspired to prophesy any future events — till they should 
come to pass; " Stiles was familiar with every department of 
learning, — " theology, literature, science, whatever could in- 
terest an inquisitive mind ... he included among the 
subjects of his investigations ; " 3 the elder Dwight is well 
known for the impulse that he gave to the expansion of the 
college in all directions; the judicious Day was the author 
of a metaphysical study and of mathematical text-books; 
Woolsey is distinguished as the promoter of classical litera- 
ture, and at the same time as the President under whom the 
School of Science was developed; Porter and the younger 
Dwight brought the University forward to its present com- 
prehensiveness and influence in all branches of knowledge. 
Indeed, science and letters have always been the care of the 
Corporation, and such will be the case while the helm is held 
by the discerning and vigorous pilot under whom the bark 
3 Quoted from J. L. Kingsley. 



182 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

begins another voyage, and so long as the alumni crew support 
the master and the mates. 

Considering the hesitation with which the English uni- 
versities recognised the study of nature as their concern p 
and how easy it is to awaken hostilities between the students 
of science and letters, or between ecclesiastics and naturalists, 
it is well to remember how early science came into the Yale 
curriculum, and how steadily it has held its place. A chair 
of mathematics, physics, and astronomy was instituted thirty 
years before the professorship of ancient languages. As it 
is pleasant to associate the name of Sir Isaac Newton with 
the beginning of our library, it is likewise pleasant to re- 
member Benjamin Franklin as a donor of scientic appa- 
ratus. " Immortalis Franklinus " he was called by Stiles. 
Before the college was fifty years old he had become its 
valued friend, and was enrolled among the laureati in 1753. 
Four years previous he had sent here an electrical machine 
which enabled the young tutor, Ezra Stiles, to perform the 
first electrical experiments tried in New England. A 
Fahrenheit thermometer was a subsequent gift of Franklin's, 
and his influence led the University of Edinburgh to con- 
fer upon Stiles a Doctor's degree. 

At the dawn of scientific activity in New England we see 
the commanding and attractive figure of our elder brother, 
Manasseh Cutler, storekeeper, lawyer, soldier, statesman, pas- 
tor, preacher, physician and naturalist, member of the Legis- 
lature and of Congress, appointed to the federal bench, advo- 
cate of the " homestead " policy, and a pioneer among the 
settlers of the wilderness of Ohio. His greatest distinction is 
the part that the took in drafting and passing the ordinance of 
1787, by which slavery was excluded from the Northwest 
territory and a grant of the public domain was secured for 
the promotion of education. That is a record to be proud 
of, brethren of the Alumni, but it does not include the whole 
story. Cutler, a man of the true scientific spirit^ an ob- 



RELATIONS OF YALE TO SCIENCE 183 

server of the heavens above and of the earth beneath, is the 
father of New England botany. He made a noteworthy 
contribution to the memoirs of the American Academy, col- 
lected and described between three and four hundred plants 
of New England, and left seven volumes of manuscript notes, 
which are now in the Harvard herbarium, awaiting the edi- 
torial care of a botanical antiquary. Franklin and Jeffer- 
son valued him as a friend, and his correspondents in Europe 
were among the chief naturalists of the day. 

About the beginning of the nineteenth century Dwight and 
his three professors, who only uttered sotto voce the word 
university (though Stiles had written it in 1777), lest they 
should be regarded as pretenders, introduced a new era in 
which the progress has been constant and of increasing rapid- 
ity. In this new era classical studies have been promoted by 
Kingsley, the lover of antiquity, whose keen sword defended 
the study of the classics ; Woolsey, the lover of letters, who in- 
troduced us to Plato and the dramatists of Greece ; Thacher, 
the lover of students; Hadley, the lover of lore; Packard, 
the lover of learning, — and by the accomplished standard 
bearers still living; and science likewise had its skilled pro- 
moters; Silliman, leader in chemistry, mineralogy and 
geology, the alluring teacher, the captivating lecturer, un- 
surpassed by any, equalled only by Agassiz; Olmsted, the 
patient, inventive instructor, whose impulses toward original 
investigation were not supported by his opportunities ; Loomis, 
interpreter of the law of storms and master of the whirl- 
wind ; Dana, the oceanographer, who wore the tiara of three 
sciences; Newton, devoted to abstract thought, who re- 
vealed the mysteries of meteoric showers and their relation 
to comets, not before suggested; and Marsh, the inland ex- 
plorer, whose discoveries had an important bearing on the 
doctrine of evolution, — these all with the brilliant corps of the 
Sheffield Scientific School were men of rare ability who ex- 
pounded and illustrated the laws of nature with such clear- 



1 84 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

ness and force that the graduates of Yale are everywhere to 
be counted as for certain the promoters of science. 

Two agencies are conspicuous in the retrospective of this 
second era, the American Journal of Science and the Sheffield 
Scientific School. Benjamin Silliman showed great sagacity 
when he perceived, in 1818, the importance of publication, 
and established, of his own motion, on a plan that is still 
maintained, a repository of scientific papers, which through its 
long history has been recognised both in Europe and in the 
United States as comprehensive and accurate; a just and 
sympathetic recorder of original work; a fair critic of do- 
mestic and foreign researches ; and a constant promoter of ex- 
periment and observation. It is an unique history. For 
more than eighty years this journal has been edited and pub- 
lished by members of a single family, — three generations of 
them, — with unrequited sacrifices, unquestioned authority, 
unparalleled success. In the profit and loss account, it ap- 
pears that the college has never contributed to the financial 
support, but it has itself gained reputation from the fact that 
throughout the world of Science, Silliman and Dana, suc- 
cessive editors, from volume 1 to volume 162, have been 
known as members of the Faculty of Yale. I am sure that 
no periodical, I am not sure that any academy or university 
in the land has had as strong an influence upon science as 
the American Journal of Science and Arts. 

A century has nearly passed since Benjamin Silliman was 
chosen a professor and went to Scotland, there to fit himself 
for the duties of the chair. What a century it has been! 
The widespread interest among our countrymen in geology, 
mineralogy, and chemistry is due in no small degree to his 
college instructions and to the lectures that he delivered in 
many cities between Boston and New Orleans. 

The Sheffield School celebrated three years ago its semi- 
centennial, and its useful services were rehearsed by one who 
will not venture to offer you a twice told tale. You must, 



RELATIONS OF YALE TO SCIENCE 185 

however, permit him to remind you that fifty years ago the 
choice of studies was but timidly permitted in the traditional 
college, and that there was a strong demand for courses less 
classical, more scientific than were then offered. These 
wants the school supplied without antagonism or rivalry, 
though not without the awakening of alarm. It proved to 
be a rich addition to the resources and the renown of Yale, as 
everyone admits. Its faculty was made up chiefly of men 
whose ideas were broad, whose distinction was acknowledged, 
whose methods were approved, and this, with the munificent 
support of the benefactor whose name the school has been 
proud to bear, enabled Yale to stand forth as the ready, wise 
and resolute promoter of education in science. The alumni 
of the school are the proofs of its success. 

Agricultural science in the United States owes much to the 
influences which have gone out from the Sheffield School. 
John P. Norton, John A. Porter, Samuel W. Johnson, Wil- 
liam H. Brewer, each in his own peculiar way, has rendered 
much service. Johnson is pre-eminent, and in addition to his 
standing as a chemist is honoured as one of the first and most 
persuasive advocates of the Experiment Stations now main- 
tained, with the aid of the government, in every part of the 
country. We cannot forget the value of " the crops," — we 
may forget how much their value has been enhanced by the 
quiet, inconspicuous, patient and acute observations of such 
men as those whom I have named, the men behind the men 
who stand behind the plough. They are the followers in our 
generation of Jared Eliot, the colonial advocate of agricul- 
tural science. 

In the thirties there was an informal association which 
may be called a voluntary syndicate for the study of 
astronomy. Its members were young men of talents, en- 
thusiasm and genuine desire to advance the bounds of human 
knowledge, but their time was absorbed by various vocations, 
and their apparatus seems lamentably inadequate in these days 



1 86 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY! 

of Lick and Yerkes, of spectroscopes, heliometres and pho- 
tography. Yet we may truly claim that the example and 
success of these Yale brethren initiated that zeal for as- 
tronomical research which distinguished our countrymen. 

The Clark telescope, acquired in 1830, was an excellent 
glass, though badly mounted, and was then unsurpassed in 
the United States. One of its earliest and noteworthy reve- 
lations was the appearance of H alley's comet, which was 
observed, from the tower in the Athenaeum, weeks before the 
news arrived of its having been seen in Europe. This gave 
an impulse to observatory projects in Cambridge and Phila- 
delphia, and college after college soon emulated the example 
of Yale by establishing observatories in embryo, for the study 
of the heavens. The most brilliant luminary in our con- 
stellation was Ebenezer Porter Mason, a genius, who died at 
twenty-two, having made a profound impression on his con- 
temporaries by discoveries, observations, computations and 
delineations. After his death, which was lamented like that 
of Horrox, it was not thought an exaggeration to compare 
his powers with those of Sir William Herschel, — or even with 
those of Galileo. Under the leadership of Olmsted, Herrick, 
Bradley, Loomis and Hamilton L. Smith were associate ob- 
servers, and they were afterwards re-enforced by Twining, 
Lyman and Newton. Chauvenet became a writer and 
teacher of renown, and the missionary Stoddard carried to 
the Nestorians a telescope that he had made at Yale under 
the syndicate's influence. 

The investigations of these astronomers were directed to 
the aurora borealis, the zodiacal light, the recurrence of 
comets, the meteoric showers, and the possible existence of 
an intra-mercurial planet. Newton became the most dis- 
tinguished of the group. Partly by antiquarian researches 
in the records of the past, continuing the notes of Herrick, 
partly by mathematical analysis and a careful comparison of 
the paths of meteors he determined the periodicity of these 



RELATIONS OF YALE TO SCIENCE 187 

mysterious and fascinating phenomena, and their relation to 
comets. 

The astronomical syndicate of Olmsted and his pupils was 
long ago dissolved, but its spirit hovers near us, and beyond 
Sachem's Wood, in the Winchester Observatory, skilled as- 
tronomers with their great heliometer are engaged upon prob- 
lems which were not even thought of by the discerning in- 
tellect of Mason and his brilliant confreres. 

In the science of mineralogy Yale has long maintained the 
American leadership. Every one of us has heard the story 
of the candle-box of specimens, which Silliman carried to 
Philadelphia to be named, and every one of us has seen the 
subsequent accretions to be the nucleus, beginning with the 
Gibbs cabinet, now shown in the Peabody Museum. No one 
is likely to over-estimate the influence of this collection upon 
the mind of James D. Dana, nor to over-estimate the value 
of his treatise on mineralogy which, revised and enlarged by 
able co-operators, continues to be a standard authority, in 
every country where mineralogy is studied. In view of its 
recent acquisition, I am tempted to speak of the Museum as 
the " House of the Dinosaur." Its choice collections give 
an epitome of the sciences of mineralogy, crystallography, 
meteoroids, geology, palaeontology, and natural history, from 
the days of Silliman to those of the Danas, Brush, Marsh 
and Verrill. 

The heart of a university is its library. If that is vigor- 
ous, every part of the body is benefited. Our college began 
with books ; the incunabula were given by the founders, good 
books no doubt, if not a single volume relating to classical 
literature or the sciences were among them. Noteworthy 
accessions came at an early day, some of them from Elihu 
Yale. Think of eight hundred volumes sent from England, 
including the gifts of many famous writers. Remember such 
donors as Sir Richard Steele, of the Spectator, and the great 
Sir Isaac Newton, — and then be grateful to forgotten 



1 88 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

Jeremiah Dummer, who collected and forwarded this precious 
invoice. Fifteen years later than Dummer's donation came 
nine hundred volumes from Bishop Berkeley, which with his 
bequest for scholarships and prizes, entitle him to receive 
the highest praise as an early and liberal promoter of the 
humanities. Renewed homage should now be given to the 
benefactor whose timely and catholic bounty enriched this 
adolescent college. Therefore, let us repeat once more the 
verse of Alexander Pope, and ascribe " To Berkeley, every 
virtue under heaven." Gratitude to this great philosopher 
shall not diminish our acknowledgments to that long line of 
donors who have made the library worthy of the university 
which has grown up around it, — Chittenden, foremost among 
them. 

Bibliographers and librarians are the servants of the tem- 
ple, — servi servorum academice, — and such as Edward C. 
Herrick, Henry Stevens, William F. Poole, James Ham- 
mond Trumbull, and Robbins Little, are rare men, conspicu- 
ous among the promoters of historical research. 

In controversial periods the attitude of Yale has been very 
serviceable to the advancement of truth. The Copernican 
cosmography was probably accepted from the beginning, 
although elsewhere the Ptolemaic conceptions of the universe 
maintained their supremacy, and the notes which Rector 
Pierson made on Physics when he was a student in Harvard 
come " between the Ptolemaic theory and the Newtonian " 
(Dexter). When geology became a science, its discoveries 
were thought to be in conflict with the teachings of the 
Scripture. Ridicule attacked the arguments of science, and 
opprobrium was thrown upon the students of nature. Brave 
Silliman stood firm in the defence of geology, and although 
some of the bastions on which he relied became untenable, the 
keep never surrendered, the flag was never lowered. When 
the modern conceptions of evolution were brought forward 
by Darwin, Wallace and their allies, when conservatists 



RELATIONS OF YALE TO SCIENCE 189 

dreaded and denounced the new interpretation of the natural 
world, the wise and cautious utterances of Dana at first dis- 
sipated all apprehensions of danger, and then accepted in the 
main the conclusions of the new biological school. The 
graduates who came under his influence were never fright- 
ened by chimaeras. Marsh's expeditions to the Rocky Moun- 
tains, and his marvellous discoveries of ancient life, made 
the Peabody Museum an important repository of geological 
testimony to the truth of evolution. 

I remember the surprise of Huxley in 1875 when, at a 
dinner of the X Club in London, I told him of Marsh's dis- 
covery of the fossil horse. In the following year, the great 
English naturalist came to New Haven to see in the Peabody 
Museum that of which he had heard and read. In his lec- 
tures at New York he soon described the work of Marsh, and 
subsequently referred to its important bearings. 

Scant justice has been done in this discourse to the sciences 
promoted at Yale, — and the deficiency is the more apparent 
when I think of the men now living whose work has been 
precluded from our scope. The next centennial discourse 
may do justice to them. Among the departed whose careers 
were made outside the walls of Yale, Percival, the geologist of 
Connecticut and Wisconsin, J. D. Whitney, the geologist of 
California, Chauvenet, the mathematician, Hubbard, the 
astronomer, Sullivant, the chief authority in mosses as Eaton 
is in ferns, F. A. P. Barnard, the accomplished President of 
Columbia, Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton-gin, and 
S. F. B. Morse, whose name is familiar from its relation to 
the electric telegraph, — are especially entitled to honourable 
mention in this jubilee. So is a much older graduate, David 
Bushnell, the inventor of submarine explosives, — the precur- 
sor of the modern torpedoes. So also, Elisha Mitchell, 
mineralogist, geologist, explorer, whose body is entombed 
upon the lofty peak in North Carolina which bears his 
honoured name. 



190 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

There is a good deal to think about in the annals of Yale. 
It is not a perfect record. Deficiencies, errors, failures are 
met with from time to time, — such as are found in every 
human institution, even in those most sacred. It is not my 
business to seek them or point them out. It is rather my 
privilege to honour the good men that have built up for us 
and for our successors this great edifice, upon the firm foun- 
dations of devotion and faith; to admire the skill, the pru- 
dence and the honesty with which inadequate resources have 
been husbanded; and especially to appreciate that admirable 
union of conservative and progressive forces which keeps hold 
of that which is good until the better is reached, that believes 
in the study of Nature and all its manifestations, and of 
Man and all that he has achieved in language, philosophy, 
government, religion, and the liberal arts. 

This honoured and reverend seminary has taught thousands 
of men of talent to be wise and good citizens, avoiding 
avarice and pretence, ready for service wherever Providence 
might call them, in education, philanthropy, diplomacy, 
statesmanship, church-work, literature and science ; not a few 
men of genius have submitted themselves to her discipline 
and acknowledged the inspiration derived from her counsels ; 
some of her sons have laid down their lives for God and 
their country; many have carried to the ends of the earth 
her precepts and principles; all, or nearly all, have been the 
friends and supporters of republican institutions, the lovers 
of sound learning and good books, the promoters of science 
whenever their aid was wanted, its alert defenders against 
bigotry and alarm, confessors of the Christian doctrine. 

What is the Yale spirit? Is it not the spirit of the bee- 
hive? I repeat the words of Maeterlinck: 

" The spirit of the hive is prudent and thrifty, but by 
no means parsimonious. It is the spirit of the hive that 
scares away vagabonds, marauders and loiterers; expels all 
intruders; attacks redoubtable foes in a body, or if needs 



RELATIONS OF YALE TO SCIENCE 191 

be, barricades the entrance. It is the spirit of the hive 
that fixes the hour of the great annual sacrifice, the hour, 
that is, of the swarm, when those who have attained the 
topmost pinnacle, suddenly abandon to the coming genera- 
tion their wealth and their palaces, their homes and their 
honey, — themselves content to encounter the hardships and 
perils of a new and distant country. Little city, abounding 
in faith and mystery and hope." 

May I carry the simile further? "The bees," says the 
poetic observer, " have stings which they use against foes and 
even in fights among themselves, but they never draw their 
stings against the queen." Alma mater is our queen. Against 
her foes, against one another, we may be forced to draw our 
weapons, but never against the queen, alma mater carissima. 

The spirit of Yale, a mysterious and subtle influence, is 
the spirit of the hive, — intelligence, industry, order, obedi- 
ence, community, living for others, not for one's self, the 
greatest happiness in the utmost service. Virgil's words are 
on the hive, — Sic vos non vobis. 

The new order, which gives to adolescence an extreme 
freedom in the choice of studies, may be more favourable 
than the old, to the production of men of letters, poets, ora- 
tors, historians, essayists, — and of investigators who will ex- 
tend the bounds of mathematical, physical and natural 
science. Nobody can tell. Everyone is hopeful. But 
with all their gettings, may the new generation emulate their 
forebears in wisdom, self-control, sound judgment, and in 
hearty appreciation of all that books have recorded and all 
that nature has revealed. 

Much reproach has been thrown upon the studies of 
colonial days because they were mainly directed toward 
theology and philosophy, and because there was so little study 
of the natural world. It is well to reply that nature studies 
are the growth of the last century, since Berzelius, 
Cuvier and Liebig initiated the modern methods of enquiry, 



192 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

carried on by Faraday, Darwin and Dana. Remember also 
that rigid discipline in logic and dialectics makes clear and 
accurate thinkers, fitted to treat the current questions of 
society with discrimination, perspicuity and persuasion. If 
our grandfathers did not excel in what we are pleased to call 
literature, they were taught to follow a rule of the illustrious 
Goethe, " to use words coinciding as closely as possible with 
what we feel, see, think, experience, imagine and reason." 
Such men were fitted to take part in the great Revolution of 
1776, and in more recent wars; to be influential in the forma- 
tion of the Constitution of the United States, and in the 
administration of justice and order in every State of the 
Union; qualified likewise to lead in the organisation and 
development of academies of science and schools of learning, 
defenders of the faith, upholders of right conduct, advocates 
of civil service reform, promoters of literature and science; 
and in general, trained by such discipline as they here 
received in mathematics, logic, history, language, philosophy, 
and science, to be the leading men in every community where 
their homes were placed. 

Sic <vos non vobis mellificatis apes. 



BOOKS AND POLITICS 

An Address on the Completion of a New 
Library Building at Princeton University 



For several years after its sesqui-centennial was cele- 
brated, Princeton University assembled its graduates 
and students near the opening of the Academic year for 
some special purpose. In 1898 the new Library Build- 
ing was completed, and on that occasion the following 
address was delivered. It was a time of great public 
excitement, when all the questions involved in the 
Cuban War were attracting attention and dividing 
the opinions of thoughtful citizens. 



XII 



BOOKS AND POLITICS — AN ADDRESS ON THE COMPLETION 

OF A NEW LIBRARY BUILDING AT PRINCETON 

UNIVERSITY 

When iEneas, in his wanderings from Troy toward the 
Lavinian shores, touched the domains of Dido and saw the 
rising walls of Carthage, he likened the place to a hive of 
bees. " The work is all fire," he exclaims. " A scent of 
thyme breathes from the fragrant honey." As he looked up- 
ward to roof and tower, his soul was filled with envious ad- 
miration, and these were his words : " O happy they whose 
city is rising already." With a like exclamation I salute this 
fortunate university. Its ample campus, its engaging pros- 
pects, its historic associations, its spacious halls lead me to 
repeat the Trojan's exclamation: 

O fortunati quorum jam moenia surgunt, 
^Eneas ait, et fastigia suspicit urbis. 

Among these rising walls it is the Library whicH claims 
attention to-day; — the Library, latest and best of the struc- 
tures surrounding Nassau Hall. Latest, I say, not last, 
for imagination already pictures other halls upon this cam- 
pus; best, not in the least to disparage this theatre, that 
chapel, those fraternities, that museum, these dormitories, — 
the best because the Library of a university is its very heart. 
If the heart is weak, every organ suffers; if strong, all are 
invigorated. Its impulses send nourishment to every nerve, 
sinew, and muscle. True it is that stone and wood, however 
ornamental, do not make a Library, — nor does a heap of 
books, hoarded by an antiquary in some dark loft, ill-arranged, 

i95 



ig6 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

inaccessible and laden with dust. Choice materials well ad- 
ministered in a fitting hall, are the two essentials. 

Those who have watched, amazed, the remarkable trans- 
formation of American seminaries during the last quarter of 
the nineteenth century, may ask what is to be, in this land, 
the university of the future. Who can cast its horoscope? 
Certainly I cannot. Yet without question the Libraries 
and Laboratories are to be joint sovereigns, — libraries which 
treasure the archives of the human race, laboratories which 
open the arcana of nature; and it is safe to say that the uni- 
versity of the future, even more than the university of the 
present, will be controlled by three factors, — teachers, in- 
struments and books. 

The old idea that a library is a place to go and get some- 
thing to read, has given way to the new idea that it is a place 
for study. Panizzi's injunction might be written on its 
walls : " I would have this place so convenient and so com- 
plete that no private person however rich can own its equiva- 
lent." To this might be added as the law of Nassau Hall, — 
" Every librarian must be a professor; every professor must 
be a librarian." That is to say, every person in charge of 
the university collections must be a student, capable of teach- 
ing. His specialty must be bibliography, or, if the staff 
is large, some branch of bibliography, literary, historical, 
philosophical or scientific, and he must know not only what 
his collection includes, but what it needs. Likewise, every 
professor must know the printed apparatus of his own de- 
partment, so that he can be an assistant to the Librarian, as 
well as a guide to the adolescent scholar. By this joint ac- 
tion of the expert bibliographer and the alert investigator, 
good libraries are built up. 

Four functions of a public or collegiate Library, — some- 
times kept distinct, usually more or less combined, should 
always be borne in mind. 
_The first is circulation, the loaning of books for private 



BOOKS AND POLITICS 197 

use, — a popular, an indispensable service, to which alone the 
early American libraries were usually restricted. 

The second is storage, — the accumulation of everything 
printed, — good, bad and indifferent, — because some day it 
may be wanted. Like the contents of a farmer's garret, you 
may say; yet you should also say that to this conservative 
function, the great libraries of the world are consecrated. 
Without such store-houses the great histories and biographies 
of modern literature could not have been written. 

The third function is reference. This term was the 
favourite expression of the last generation, when Astor, 
Lenox, Peabody, and other founders endeavoured to lift the 
library above the plane of circulation and entertainment, and 
even of storage. They sought to bring the public library 
within the range of scholarship, and we are grateful heirs of 
their endeavours. 

Finally, libraries are now recognised as places of research, 
a higher function than that of reference. This marks a great 
advance quite in accord with the dominant spirit of enquiry 
and investigation. Here comes in Justin Winsor's law, — 
" A book is never so useful as when it is in use," and the 
necessary corollary that every possible effort must be made 
to facilitate the use of books. Hence the university of the 
future is bound to develop and augment its facilities for 
literary research. Literary seminaries must run parallel with 
scientific laboratories ; or, to use a better phrase, — in the uni- 
versity of the future, these two kinds of working rooms must 
be equally maintained, equipped, adapted to special needs, 
and made light, quiet and convenient for study. 

A little reflection will show that the world has never been 
so well prepared as now for the use of the past experience of 
mankind ; never were the lessons of remote antiquity, or the 
origin of our fundamental conceptions of religion and politics 
so clear; never were diplomatic negotiations so quickly re- 
moved from the seal of mystery and privacy ; never were the 



198 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

intimate records of cabinets and sovereigns so freely made 
public; never were the long series of historical monuments, 
and other memoires inedites, so accessible; never were biog- 
raphies of great leaders so amplified, — Napoleon, Goethe, 
Gladstone, Bismarck; never were the auxiliary index-makers 
so accurate and painstaking; never was periodical literature 
so inquisitive, suggestive, and comprehensive; never were 
students of history so numerous or so well disciplined ; never 
were great collections from the Tiber to the Potomac so open 
as now. 

Let me draw from current affairs some illustrations of the 
highest service that libraries can render to the community in 
which they are placed. Go to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and 
ask leave to visit a battleship or armed cruiser. Place your- 
self, if permitted, under the guidance of a naval officer. Lis- 
ten to his story of how the ship was designed, constructed, 
protected, armed, equipped, navigated, carried into action, 
and brought out of the terrific fire unscathed and victorious. 
In the aggregate and the detail you will see the results of ap- 
plied science more impressive than any of the seven wonders 
of the world. As illustrations of human power, the pyramid 
of Cheops, the dome of St. Peter's, the great bridges, the con- 
tinental railways, the Eiffel tower take a secondary rank 
when compared with a battleship. Every branch of physical 
science has contributed to naval architecture. Mathematics, 
mechanics, electricity, chemistry, metallurgy produced the 
tremendous enginery of the Oregon, able to ride upon stormy 
waves and encounter the cyclone unharmed, double Cape 
Horn without replenishing its coal, discharge its explosives 
with consummate accuracy, destroy the enemy and protect the 
lives and limbs of officers and crew. Whence is this applied 
science derived? From thousands of years of research and 
record. Mathematics begins with theorems as old as Euclid ; 
steel with the earliest extraction of the ore ; the luminous elec- 
tron of primeval men was the dawn of electricity ; so, in every 



BOOKS AND POLITICS 199 

department, the work of many generations has accumulated. 
And where is this knowledge stored up? It is perpetuated 
and augmented in libraries; it is taught in colleges, schools 
of science, and naval academies ; by its acquisition " the man 
behind the gun " is disciplined in accuracy, coolness, memory, 
ingenuity, judgment, and intellectual strength. 

Pass from the domain of science to that of history. You 
are more or less familiar with the Venezuelan incident of 
three years ago. Certainly a distinguished graduate of 
Nassau Hall, now resident in Princeton, knows more about 
that stirring episode of United States History than anybody 
living — except, perhaps, that learned and masterful publicist 
who held the portfolio of foreign affairs during the later 
years of the last administration. 

But let me tell you of some details that have never been 
made the subject of public comment. By the authority of 
Congress, the President appointed a commission to investi- 
gate a disputed boundary which had been for many years 
the basis of an irritating controversy between Great Britain 
and Venezuela. Incessant correspondence, in which the 
United States had taken a principal part, brought no conclu- 
sion. Of the merits of that prolonged negotiation I shall not 
speak, — nor of its history, nor is it possible to forecast the 
decision which may be given by the court of arbitration and 
adjustment that is soo'n to meet in Paris. My simple pur- 
pose is to show the method of enquiry which the commission 
pursued, as an illustration of the value of libraries and of 
trained researchers in the prosecution of a governmental 
enquiry. 

To this commission, when they first assembled, it was clear 
that their task involved an historico-geographical enquiry, 
antecedent and leading up to an application of public law 
which could only be made when the facts were ascertained. 
These legal aspects of the controversy were safely entrusted, 
and without hesitation, to three eminent jurists who were 



200 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

members of the commission, but the development of the 
facts was prerequisite to the formation of an opinion. An 
accomplished secretary was ready to do his part, and two 
university presidents, not unfamiliar with the methods of 
historical and geographical research, aided their colleagues 
by their experience. But where was the material to be found 
from which a summary of the truth could be derived ? The 
governments of Great Britain and Venezuela presented elabo- 
rate memoirs ; but they were not exhaustive. What discrep- 
ancies could be found, hidden or obvious? What was the 
origin of certain conflicting statements? Which of the ex- 
isting maps were original, based upon actual survey or terri- 
torial visitation, and which were more or less imperfect 
reproductions and adaptations by editors who were irre- 
sponsible or careless? Libraries contained the answers — 
and diligent search was instituted at once. To present the 
information thus to be acquired in a shape that could be 
readily understood, a map of the region involved must be 
first compiled. An expert cartographer of the U. S. Geo- 
logical Survey examined the collections which were readily 
found in the Library of Congress, the State Department, 
the Geological Survey, and the hydrographic bureau of the 
United States Navy, and at length he produced what, with 
many imperfections, is probably the best physical map of 
Venezuela that has ever been drawn. It will some day be 
superseded by topographic surveys, but not for many years 
to come. This, however, was not enough. Everybody 
knew that in Harvard there was an extraordinary collection 
of maps bought many years ago, and that they were in charge 
of a learned interpreter, now, alas, no more. He was at 
once enlisted. In the Lenox Library of New York, and the 
American Geographical Society, other charts and books were 
discovered. Then, to everyone's surprise, word came that 
in Madison, Wisconsin, there was a rare collection of Dutch 
authorities, which must be examined. For the handling of 



BOOKS AND POLITICS 201 

this varied and comprehensive material, an historian of Brown 
University and a linguist of Johns Hopkins were called in. 
Meanwhile, the remarkable abilities of an historical bibliog- 
rapher at Cornell University were remembered, and he was 
sent abroad to investigate in the archives of Holland, and 
subsequently in those of England, dubious points, particularly 
involved in the succession of England to the rights of Holland 
in Guiana. Then another interesting enquiry arose respect- 
ing the progress of Roman Catholic missionaries in the heart 
of South America, and through an influential personage 
access was gained to the lore of missionary brotherhoods re- 
porting to the Vatican. From these sources, a standard 
atlas showing the historical development of a vast area was 
compiled and published. With it were four volumes of text. 
All this will be presented, as impartial evidence, to the inter- 
national court which is called upon to adjudicate this com- 
plex, important and wearisome controversy. The Ven- 
ezuelan Government has reproduced as part of their evi- 
dence for that court very many of the maps thus set forth. 

You must admit that this story shows how useful the 
libraries and professorships of this country have been in a 
crisis that came very near involving three countries in war. 

,By these examples I have been leading up to the principal 
theme of this discourse, — the relation of books to politics, 
or in other words, to the attitude appropriate to scholars 
in the perplexities which now involve our countrymen. 

Since that anxious period in the history of the United 
States, when the articles of confederation led up to the 
Constitution, there has been no time when it was so im- 
portant to study, proclaim and enforce the lessons of history. 
Not only our welfare, but that of unnumbered, impoverished 
and half-enlightened islanders will be affected by the policy 
which will soon be formulated by our government. It may 
help us to appreciate these imminent responsibilities if we 
make a rapid survey of the globe in this anxious hour. 



202 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

Count the summer only, from the time when the sun 
crossed the equator in his northward course until he re- 
turned thereto, and is it not the most remarkable summer of 
American history since the summer of 1776, not excepting 
that of 1863 ? Take a broader view, and will you not admit 
that in events and consequences it is one of the most re- 
markable years of history since the days of Napoleon ? Con- 
sider the chief events. The world has been shocked by the 
death of an Empress at the hand of an assassin. Two world- 
renowned statesmen, who through their long careers in Eng- 
land and Germany, wielded the powers that were almost 
supreme, have joined the immortals. Another, almost 
equally eminent in the Chinese empire, has been deposed 
from his high office, then reinstated. The Empress mother 
appears to have assumed the prerogatives of the Emperor, 
who is said to be incarcerated. Meanwhile, through the 
Celestial Empire, the supremacy of European civilisation is 
rapidly advancing. An Imperial University under the lead- 
ership of a gifted American has been inaugurated. Rail- 
road concessions have been granted to foreign capitalists. 
Russia, England and France are on the alert, and, if actual 
war upon the Chinese coasts or within the borders has been 
averted thus far, the low rumblings of Poseidon, the earth- 
shaker, have been heard, — rumblings of jealousy and rivalry 
not likely to be suppressed by the doctrine of " spheres of 
influence " in the partition of China. The confinement of 
a solitary prisoner on a dreary islet fitly named " The 
Devil's," has led to revelations which are shaking the stability 
of the Republic of France and have endangered its relations 
to other governments. Germany and England have come 
to a peaceful adjustment of their respective claims upon the 
Eastern Coast of Africa. British arms, with unparalleled 
skill, — a triumph of military science, — have beaten the 
Dervishes; planted the cross of St. George on Omdurman- 
Khartoum, where the Khalifa's black flag had been waving 



BOOKS AND POLITICS 203 

since the death of brave General Gordon; freed the upper 
valley of the Nile, and opened thus a passage to the lakes 
of central Africa, there to meet, ere long, an opposite current 
coming northward from the Cape, — all this prognostic of 
English supremacy, in the interior of the dark continent, 
from the delta at Alexandria to the settlements of Cape 
Town. The unexpected appearance of the forces of France 
at Fashoda has caused a temporary, perhaps a serious, em- 
barrassment. The Emperor of Russia, Nicholas the pacif- 
icator, successor of Alexander the liberator, has called for 
a conference of the European powers looking toward dis- 
armament, and the responses if not conclusive are hopeful. 
England and America, without a formal alliance, have en- 
gaged in the peaceful settlement of such open questions as 
pertain to the continent of North America. More than this, 
mother and daughter have been drawn more closely together 
than they ever have been since the colonial tie was severed, 
drawn too by sentiments stronger than speeches or than 
language, stronger than arms, stronger than treaties, — strong 
in the consciousness of kin and the equal inheritance of in- 
stitutions and ideas, religion and law. 

All this in the old world; turn now to the new. For 
the first time, in half a century, the United States has en- 
gaged in a foreign war, — the war of one hundred days. 
Never have her young men shown more patriotism, more 
courage, more endurance, more strength. A quarter of a 
million brave defenders have rallied round the flag. South- 
erners and Northerners have stood side by side once more 
together, brothers in arms, as they were at Cowpens and 
Yorktown, a blessed sign of complete reunion. Sectional 
animosity has disappeared. In this vast army, mirabile dictu, 
less than three hundred men were reported killed by sword 
and ball. Our victorious fleet, the white squadron of peace, 
has demonstrated not only the supremacy of naval power, 
to which Captain Mahan had been calling the attention of 



204 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

the world, but it has also shown the abilities of our country- 
men in devising, constructing, and handling these giants 
of the sea, while with consummate accuracy the range has 
been determined, the guns sighted, and huge projectiles 
hurled on their destructive mission. In one memorable 
morning, the hands of Spain were released from their grasp 
upon the pearl of the Antilles, and soon, when the ashes 
of Columbus return from Havana to Seville, requiescant in 
pace, her supremacy will have vanished from the lands that 
Columbus discovered, from a domain that once extended 
from the heart of North America to the heart of South 
America and over the intervening seas. 

The bravery of our seamen, never questioned since the 
days of Paul Jones, has been demonstrated again in the hand- 
ling of new engines of battle, the floating forts. At the same 
time, the unfailing and spontaneous generosity and courtesy 
of officers and seamen, toward a conquered foe, in the 
moment of exulting victory, has brought out the world's 
applause. " Do not cheer," said the commander of a vessel 
on which a fallen crew was received. " They were our 
enemies; we have beaten them, and they are now our 
friends." The consideration of the Spaniards for brave 
Hobson and his men was not forgotten when gallant Cer- 
vera and his colleagues arrived upon our shores. 

Nor is this all. In the distant Philippines, first the navy 
alone of the United States, then the navy and army together, 
achieved great victories and placed in our possession the con- 
trol of that great island group. The Ladrones yielded 
without a contest. It was one of the humours of the war, 
caught up by a gifted story-teller, that the Commandant of 
Guam apologised for not returning the American salute be- 
cause of the want of proper ammunition, and was astonished 
to find himself on the way to Manila as a prisoner of war. 

Meanwhile, Hawaii, conquered long ago by the peaceful 
agencies of civilisation, has been annexed to the United 



BOOKS AND POLITICS 205 

States, " for better for worse, for richer for poorer, till 
death us do part." It was a pathetic scene when the Stars 
and Stripes arose above the government house in Honolulu. 

We have had our financial as well as our military and 
naval victories. The cry of the silver dollar, not silenced, 
is muffled. A popular loan called out from the people, 
without the mediation of bankers, an offering seven times 
as great as the treasury wanted. 

It is needless to recapitulate the sequence of stirring deeds 
performed in our united service, for they have been made 
familiar to everyone, in marvellous reports, written in the 
din and peril of the battle-field, and on the decks of ships 
in action, by brave and gifted writers, whose keen observa- 
tion, accurate memories, translucent style, and immediate 
transmission of the news by boat and wire have glorified 
the profession of newspaper correspondent, and enabled the 
people to follow day by day, almost hour by hour, the 
stirring actions of our admirals and generals. Nor will I 
name the brave and gallant leaders whom you would be so 
ready to applaud, nor recount the thrilling stories of those 
private heroes, not named but not forgotten, who endured 
hunger and thirst, faced the bullet and the shell, or were 
prostrated in loneliness and pain by the more destructive 
arrows of pestilence and fever. 

The part that women took by the agency of the Red 
Cross, and by other agencies, in promoting the health and 
relieving the distress of those who were serving their country, 
can never be forgotten, nor be mentioned without awaken- 
ing a sense of the deepest gratitude to these followers of 
Florence Nightingale. 

We are now involved in the less exciting, but not less 
important, problems of peace. Able commissioners are en- 
gaged in Paris in the definition of the Spanish-American 
protocol. At home, investigations respecting the conduct of 
the war are in progress, and especially respecting the san- 



206 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

itary care of the army; the settlement of conflicting claims 
and the bestowal of well-earned laurels likewise exact at- 
tention; but above these problems, important as they are, 
there rises one transcendent question, a question without 
a precedent, involved in detail, world-wide in its sig- 
nificance. You anticipate my meaning. The great problem 
that is now before the country is not the relation of Admiral 
to Admiral, of General to General, or Secretary to sub- 
ordinates; nor is it the merit or demerit of congressional 
action in the declaration of war ; nor is it the possibility that 
Cuba might have been released from Spanish control by a 
continuance of the President's diplomacy, which at one time 
was so hopeful. Such enquiries may be relegated to history. 
But the question of to-day, the question of the decade, it 
may be the question of the twentieth century, is the attitude 
of the United States toward the islands of the sea, de insults 
nuper rupertis. This is a question for universities and uni- 
versity men to illuminate by the experience of mankind. 
Unquestionably the President and Congress, upon whom 
the ultimate responsibility will rest, will give to the problem 
the full consideration which it demands, but it is quite possi- 
ble that their conclusions may be influenced by studies pur- 
sued in the libraries of Princeton and other learned insti- 
tutions, and by publications set forth by their printing 
presses. Public opinion is forming. Speeches, pamphlets, 
resolutions, political platforms, magazine articles and books 
are following each other in quick succession. A bishop on 
the one side is answered by a bishop on the other; a scholar, 
by a senator; party utterances are confounded; the discreet 
are careful what they say while the indiscreet pronounce off- 
hand what the country ought to do. 

In considering the task of the United States, let us be 
reminded that in the evolution of this period of modern 
history, the underlying fact is this, — the nations claiming to 
be civilised are engaged in the subjugation of those that are 



BOOKS AND POLITICS 207 

not. It is almost equally important to remember that the 
revolutions now in progress, peaceful and war-ful, are due 
to many co-operating forces, four of which are noteworthy: 
— the rapidity of communication by electricity and steam, 
annihilators of space and time; the growth of manufactures 
and commerce demanding new markets; the improvement 
of munitions and armaments, especially those of naval war- 
fare; and finally the increase of education ana 1 enterprise, 
arising from the growth of science, and an eagerness to sub- 
due the earth. 

It would be instructive to review the progress of con- 
tinental empire during the nineteenth century in North 
America, Africa, and Asia, but it is Oceana with which we 
are chiefly concerned. Think of the achievements of less 
than a century. England has created great states in Aus- 
tralia; New Zealand in less than sixty years has abandoned 
barbarism for civilisation; the Fijis, in the same period, have 
become Christianised, and the seat of England's power in 
the Pacific; Tahiti is French; Samoa is under the joint pro- 
tectorate of Germany, England, and the United StateSj 
where Pago-Pago will soon be our harbour of refuge; the 
Hawaiis are now an American territory; the Ladrones are 
held, at least for the present, by right of conquest, and the 
Philippines are in chancery. 

In this period of changes it is clear that the United States, 
because of its geographical position, must of necessity be a 
mediator between Europe and Asia, if it be only as a carrier 
of methods, merchandise, and men. 

Not long ago, upon this campus, there lived and walked 
one of the broadest and most thoughtful of scientific phil- 
osophers. He printed but little, or he would be better 
known, but that little made a deep impression upon his gen- 
eration. Surely in this place, his persuasive voice, calm 
spirit, great learning, accurate knowledge of Earth and Man 
are held in such honour that his words, which sound like 



208 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

the voice of a Hebrew prophet, may be fitly recalled. He 
taught us, I remember, as Humboldt and Ritter had taught 
him, that every portion of the globe is fitted for the service 
of the human race, as the body is the temple of the soul. He 
reviewed the progress of civilisation in America, Asia and 
Europe. He looked forward to the approaching conquest 
of the Ocean, and to the opening of Eastern Asia. " Yes, 
gentlemen," he said before the Lowell Institute, in 1849, in 
a lecture on the People of the Future, " a new work is pre- 
paring, and a grave question is propounded. To what peo- 
ple shall it belong to carry out this work into reality? The 
law of history replies, To a new people. And to what 
continent? The geographical march of civilisation tells us, 
to a new continent, west of the Old World, — to America." 
And again : " The oceanic position of the American con- 
tinent secures its commercial prosperity and creates at the 
same time the means of influence upon the world. America 
is so placed as to take an active part in the great work of 
the civilisation of the world. In what measure and through 
what perils it shall be given to mankind and to America in 
particular to attain the goal is known to God alone." These 
were the words of Arnold Guyot. 

I do not purpose, on this academic occasion, to discuss 
a question upon which wise men are widely divided, eager 
as I am for the opportunity to do so. Such prudent reserve 
is justified by the fact that a board of ten commissioners is 
now in Paris engaged in determining the conditions of peace ; 
the additional fact that Congress has had no opportunity 
for debate upon the conduct and results of the war; and the 
third fact that the President, in whose wisdom and patriotism 
the country places the utmost confidence, has given no public 
sign, with all possible information at his command, of the 
attitude which the administration will take in respect to 
our new relations. This extraordinary uncertainty brings 
to mind a celebrated chapter in Montesquieu's " Spirit of 



BOOKS AND POLITICS 209 

the Laws." In that famous treatise, (to which the present 
generation might well turn for guidance, as their fathers 
did at the beginning of our constitutional history), a work 
where one hardly expects a laugh, every word of the fifteenth 
chapter of book eighth is as follows: (Caption.) Sure 
methods of preserving the three principles, (Text.) / shall 
not be able to make myself rightly understood^ till the reader 
has perused the four following chapters. So Americans 
must await the following chapters of their history before 
they can understand the one through which they are passing. 

I am not an " imperialist," an " expansionist," nor a 
" jingo." I belong to a class of citizens, represented, no 
doubt, by many in this assembly, who dread revolution, trust 
experience, and are established by inheritance, training and 
reflection in the belief that the freedom of this country from 
foreign entanglements has secured its peace and plenty, and 
is the basis of its hope and faith. I say now, as I said in 
June, that it is safer to walk in the footsteps of the fathers 
than to enter upon the dark and hidden paths of the forest, 
which lead we know not where. 

Nevertheless, is it not apparent that the events of 1898, 
following in quick succession, like the bombs from the turret 
of a battleship, have changed the outlook? If public opin- 
ion, manifest by the newspapers, expressed by speeches, 
pamphlets and resolutions, and presently to be formulated 
by Congress, demands that our acquisitions remain our 
possessions, the Americans have reached the most serious 
difficulty in government that has arisen since the Constitu- 
tion of the United States was adopted, — reconstruction, per- 
haps, excepted, though of this I am not sure. Such a state 
of affairs was not foretold by optimistic or by pessimistic 
prophecy. The political results, as distinguished from the 
military and naval, have been adverse to the wishes, argu- 
ments and anticipations of conservative men. But here we 
are, in circumstances unforeseen when the Constitution was 



210 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

adopted, when the farewell address was written, or when 
the Monroe doctrine was announced, or even at the decla- 
ration of war with Spain. 

Whatever we may think of the annexation of Hawaii, or 
of the value of Porto Rico, or of the wisdom of the recent 
war, or of its necessity, or of the terms of the protocol, or 
of the perplexities in which this country is involved, here 
we are, face to face with new problems, new responsibilities, 
new opportunities. They are not ghosts and spectres which 
will vanish as we approach them, they are giants tough and 
grim, armed with clubs, and full of deceit, — with which we 
shall have many a rude encounter before we prevail. 

Here we are. 

Emerson, in his Essay on " Race," says of the English 
that they derive their pedigree from such a range of nation- 
alities that there needs sea-room and land-room to unfold 
the varieties of talent and character; but he quickly pro- 
ceeds to tell this story : " Charlemagne, halting one day in 
a town of Narbonnese Gaul, looked out of a window and 
saw a fleet of Northmen cruising in the Mediterranean. 
They even entered the port of the town where he was, 
causing no small alarm by the sudden manning and arming 
of his galleys. As they put out to sea again, the Emperor 
gazed long after them, his eyes bathed in tears. ' I am tor- 
mented with sorrow/ he said, ' when I foresee the evils they 
will bring on my posterity.' ' : " There was reason," adds 
Emerson, " for these Xerxes tears." So it is with every 
thoughtful American with whom I have conversed. We 
foresee the evils that posterity will suffer from the events 
of 1898. 

For this state of affairs we are wholly unprepared. If 
it is true, as a member of the Cabinet has said, that war 
came like a flash of lightning out of a clear sky, and as the 
President afterwards affirmed, that " the storm broke so 
suddenly that it was here almost before we realised it," it is 



BOOKS AND POLITICS 211 

equally true that the nation is not ready for the new problems 
of civil government upon which it is entering. Reduce these 
problems to their lowest terms. Near by, Cuba, freed 
from the sovereignty of Spain, is ours for the moment by 
conquest, and yet it is not ready for self-government, 
nor will it be for a long time to come. Porto Rico 
and other Spanish islands are ours by the terms of the 
protocol, and are equally unprepared for republican suffrage. 
In the Pacific, Hawaii is ours by annexation; an island in 
the Ladrones is guaranteed to us by the protocol; we are in 
possession of the harbour, bay and city of Manila; and with 
Germany and England we are joint protectors of Samoa, 
where Pago-Pago is already a naval rendezvous. Nor 
should we forget that if none of these acquisitions had been 
made, our influence in the Pacific would still be very great. 
Our merchants, missionaries, travellers, men of letters, 
artists, scientists, are bound to traverse Oceana. American 
influence is sure to be felt in Australasia and Eastern Asia. 
We once made a call upon Japan and behold the results. 

From this influence there is no escape. The question is 
how best to use the advantages of our position for the good 
of mankind. The Chinese policy is to remain shut up within 
a wall, repel all assault, and refrain from interference with 
the affairs of other people. Shall the Americans, abandoning 
the opportunities that have been placed in their hands, main- 
tain a similar seclusion and be contented with coaling sta- 
tions; or shall they establish themselves as a civilising force 
in the Pacific? 

I purposely refrain from dwelling upon our commercial 
relations, but they must not be passed by with a contemptuous 
remark about pecuniary greed. It is right to condemn 
cupidity and avarice; yet the free and enlarged exchange of 
the products of one clime, or one State, for those of another, 
is among the highest achievements of civilisation. Commerce 
has been the making of England as truly as it was the mak- 



212 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

ing of Phoenicia. International trade is the business of the 
United States by which our own welfare and the welfare 
of all people with whom we have to deal are promoted. Let 
commerce be stopped, and all the mechanism of modern 
society is brought to silence. 

From this broad survey I return to this peaceful campus, 
and enquire: What is the duty of American students in 
this new state of affairs? That is the question for us to 
consider. We are not members of the Cabinet, nor of Con- 
gress; we are not Peace Commissioners; we are only a com- 
pany of students and teachers. What is our duty? My 
answer is a very simple one. Let David get ready to meet 
the Philistine. Let him gather the pebbles for his sling. 
Go to your books, young men, and study geography and 
history. Resort to the Library by whose reorganisation you 
are now enriched. Begin the study of Oceana, its vast 
extent, its marvellous attractions, its extraordinary people, 
its primitive customs, its amazing institutions, its adaptation 
to civilisation. With your geography, do not fail to read 
political history. Trace the steps which great nations have 
taken in dealing with primitive people. Weigh the con- 
sequences of conquest, bigotry, falsehood, greed and lust. 
Weigh also the benefits of consideration, honesty, education, 
justice, religion, and law. Follow the slow and devious 
ways by which the principles of civil and religious liberty, 
which we hold dear, have been evolved, and derive if you 
can the laws by which a like evolution may be secured among 
other people. Remember that the most enlightened nations 
are not yet perfect in governing themselves, and are very 
inexpert in governing others. 

Four centuries of experience in the transmission ol 
modern civilisation are now of record. Spain has given the 
world an object-lesson which has reached its last chapter, 
and Spain has shown what miserable result may follow from 
bad laws, bad customs, and bad institutions, The states 



BOOKS AND POLITICS 213 

of Central and South America are the examples of her best 
influence; Cuba and the Philippines of her worst. Portu- 
gal, once enterprising, has her lessons in decadence. The 
Dutch have tried their hand in the maintenance of distant 
colonies; and Java tells the tale. France has her manifold 
possessions in the Orient, and if Tahiti is not a fair illustra- 
tion of her influence, look at Algiers, Tonquin and Mada- 
gascar. England is pre-eminent in colonial supremacy. Her 
ability in governing a distant empire, especially as shown in 
South Africa, in Egypt, and in India during recent years, 
is wonderful. Russia, France, and England, to say nothing 
of Germany and Japan, now have their hands upon China, 
and no one can predict when an Eastern war will be de- 
clared, or what will be the issue. 

In respect to island life, the records of the nineteenth cen- 
tury are especially full of important and appropriate lessons. 
For example, see how the convict station of Botany Bay on 
the confines of a small continent, inhabited by cannibals, has 
expanded into a group of prosperous states. Read the story 
of the American Exploring Expedition, under Wilkes, who 
happened to be in New Zealand when Great Britain took 
hold of the islands in 1840, and went away recording in 
his narrative, " There is nothing here to interest us " ; and 
then turn to the newspapers and books of 700,000 Europeans 
established in the double island, with churches, schools, 
banks, agriculture and commerce. Follow the Hawaiians, 
from the murder of Captain Cook to the acceptance of 
American sovereignty, — a history of missions, education, 
science, agriculture and trade. The geographical literature 
of Polynesia or Oceana is rich, and the pages of Phillips, 
Mariner, the two Danas, Froude, and Stevenson, and a 
hundred other writers, are like the chapters of a romance 
or the scenes of a great drama; while the series of voyages 
from Cook to the Challenger are rich in the facts of ethnog- 
raphy and geography. Study the West Indies, and con- 



214 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

trast the beneficent life of Jamaica and the Bermudas with 
the dire stories of Hayti and San Domingo, Porto Rico and 
Cuba. 

It does not follow that if distant islands come under the 
dominion of the United States, the inhabitants of these 
islands are at once to be admitted to the privileges of self- 
government. The process of training must be gradual and 
will probably be long. Doubtless, in each case, the pro- 
cedure will differ from that of every other case, and diffi- 
culties, various and complex, will be presented ; but certainly 
modern civilisation is adequate to the task of perpetuating 
and extending its influence among the islands of Oceana, by 
introducing the fundamental principles of political well- 
being. The principle that government depends upon the will 
of the governed is not of universal application. There are 
constant conditions in which authority must be exercised 
over those who are incapable of governing themselves. It 
is as true of nations as it is of individuals that they must 
learn the art of self-government. Democratic institutions 
may be partial and gradual as well as complete. 

To discuss elaborately these questions is an appropriate 
task for the universities of this land. They have the histor- 
ical and geographical archives; they have trained investi- 
gators; they know the principles of human progress; they 
have the knowledge of constitutional law and historic juris- 
prudence. They are non-partisan. They have scores and 
hundreds of skilful coadjutors whose services can be en- 
listed. What a service they might render by combining their 
forces and distributing their tasks, to teach the world, in 
the light of history, how it is that great nations have failed 
in the business of advancing civilisation and how other great 
nations have succeeded; what constitutes a legitimate and 
humane exercise of superior force, and what is base or 
disastrous. A word from the President or a request from 
the Secretary of State would set the universities at work. It 



BOOKS AND POLITICS 215 

would be better still, if Congress would authorise the ap- 
pointment of a commission to be made up of the most learned, 
the most wise, the most experienced statesmen of the land, 
not now holding public office, and charge them to investigate 
for years to come, these problems. History, said Freeman, 
is past politics, and politics present history. What nobler 
work could a civilised nation undertake than to study its 
present in the light of the past, calmly, leisurely, and under 
conditions which ensure wise conclusions, full of instruction 
for mankind. A commission, made up of jurists, students 
of international law, economists and historians, could bring 
together, arrange, digest, and make known the conditions 
of success and the conditions of failure, and thus prepare 
the way for such legislation or for such Constitutional 
amendments as will enable the government of the United 
States to administer for the good of humanity its new re- 
sponsibilities in the islands of the sea. 

I am well aware that there are many of our best coun- 
sellors who dread to have our countrymen entertain these 
questions. We are " too corrupt," they say. " If we can- 
not govern Manhattan why undertake Manila? " If we 
are embarrassed by eight millions of Africans, speaking our 
language, voting for our rulers, and fighting with our armies, 
what can we do with eight millions of Malays, to say 
nothing of half-breeds? But I have confidence that if in 
the progress of events these responsibilities are imposed upon 
us, we shall rise to the opportunities. I appeal to English 
history. How short a time it is since seats in Parliament 
were bought; since commissions in the army were openly 
purchased; since the only civil service was favouritism and 
" pull." See what a century of increasing responsibility has 
brought upon Englishmen. We are of their stock. I appeal 
to human nature. How readily trustworthiness is fostered 
by responsibility. 

In the latest history of John Fiske's you may read that 



216 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

at the end of the last century it was claimed that, " in the 
mournful chorus of disparagement " evoked by the discovery 
of America, " the one cheery note " was the introduction of 
quinine. You may also read in the terse and vigorous phrase 
of a century later that the great historic fact, most con^ 
spicuous among the consequences of the discovery of 
America is this, that the colonial empires of England and 
Holland, fraught with civil and religious liberty, grew 
directly from the repressive war with Spain. " In the con- 
flict of Titans," he says, " that absorbed the energies of the 
sixteenth century, the question of whether it would be the 
world of Shakespeare or of Calderon that was to gain in- 
definite power of future expansion was a question of incal- 
culable importance to mankind." 

Human progress is usually heralded by fire and sword, 
hunger and thirst; our Civil War cost many hundred thou- 
sand lives ; the War of Independence was a seven years' war, 
and the cup of separation was full of bitter herbs; the 
colonisation of the New World by England required a 
century of privation and poverty; and so I might go on, but 
there is no need to do so. History warns us that in our 
new career we may anticipate perplexities, embarrassments, 
blunders, a neglect of the principles of efficient civil service, 
the rivalries of churches, the wasteful and perhaps the fraud- 
ulent expenditure of vast sums of money, and attempts to 
engraft the system of spoils on the unsophisticated and un- 
wary. I dread the conflict. Nevertheless, I believe that 
the American people, through their errors, perplexities and 
sins, will rise to the situation before them, and will succeed 
in carrying to distant lands the benefits of liberty, order and 
law; and I believe that the young men of our universities, 
to whom the great storehouses of human experience are open, 
while they point out in the history of Alexander, and Caesar, 
and Charlemagne, and Napoleon, the dangers of imperial 
magnitude, will also show us how in the twentieth century 



BOOKS AND POLITICS 217 

these dangers may be to a great extent averted, and human 
happiness be advanced by spreading through the world the 
principles of Anglo-American liberties. 

Fathers and brethren, let us not forget the words of 
Emerson, " The scholar is the man of the Ages." Let 
us not shrink from the responsibilities, whatever they may 
be, that Providence puts upon us ; but with the courage that 
inspired our young men last spring as they left the farm, 
the shop, and the counting-room, the college and the uni- 
versity, the bar and the pulpit, when the government called 
for support, let us volunteer for the longer, harder, more 
intricate contests that are coming, contests not of muscle, 
but of brains. Let the libraries be our armouries where we 
may be equipped. Let us be taught by the experience of 
England, of China, and of Spain. Let the reproach never 
rest again upon the educated young men of America that 
they do not participate in political action. Let them be 
leaders in the battles of the future, whether they command 
the squadron or carry to the guns the powder and ball. Let 
them not forget that the measure of history is not a day 
or a month or a year or a decade, but a century. The 
measuring-rod of a hundred years is the smallest gauge 
by which men mark the progress of great events. To the 
supreme intelligence, a thousand years are but as yes- 
terday. 

Be it forever remembered that we are the heirs of great 
possessions that we may not keep to ourselves. This is an 
inventory of our rich inheritance: 

1. The good tidings of Christianity, destined to pervade 
the earth with its pure and simple morality. 

2. Civil and ecclesiastical liberty, secured by many con- 
tests, from Magna Charta down. 

3. International law, propounded by great jurists and 
accepted by great states. 

4. Freedom of commercial intercourse by which the prod- 



218 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

ucts of nature and of industry are exchanged for the mutual 
benefit of the producers, with the least restriction possible. 

5. The purity and happiness of domestic life, an idea 
almost unknown to savage and half-civilised men. 

6. The value of general education, with a growing appre- 
ciation of history and literature. 

7. An increasing and beneficent harvest of scientific in- 
vestigations, by which happiness is promoted, life prolonged, 
pain destroyed, and time and space are overcome. 

It is highly probable that the young men of this uni- 
versity will soon be personally involved in the perplexities 
that have arisen from this war of one hundred days. They 
are likely to be engaged, in one capacity or another, in 
relations with distant and unenlightened islanders. At 
least, as citizens of this republic they will be concerned in 
the adjustment of American institutions to circumstances and 
people for whom they were never designed. For these new 
responsibilities they should be prepared by an acquaintance 
not only with geographical, ethnographical, and historical 
facts, but with the principles of economics, of administration, 
and especially of public and constitutional law. I urge them 
to make ready for the duties of the Christian citizen in the 
twentieth century, — to prepare for foreign affairs by the 
promotion at home of sound finance, pure religion, and 
political education. 

The methods of modern England, not Spain's, should be 
an example if it be true, as Mr. Benjamin Kidd in an im- 
pressive paragraph has declared, that England's success in 
India is due to the influence of her universities. " In other 
words," he says, " it is the best and most distinctive product 
which England can give, the higher ideals and standards 
of her universities, which is made to feed the inner life from 
which the British administration of India proceeds." 
" Progress upwards," he continues, " must be a long, slow 
process, must proceed on native lines, and must be the effect 



BOOKS AND POLITICS 219 

of the example and prestige of higher standards rather than 
the result of ruder methods. It is on a like principle that 
the development of the tropical region occupied must be held 
to be the fulfilment of a trust undertaken in the name of 
civilisation." 

You are the heirs, Princetonians, of illustrious names, 
none so illustrious as that of James Madison, whose con- 
stitutional services are acknowledged of transcendent im- 
portance. Be his pupils as you are his followers. 



CALIFORNIA REVISITED 

An Address Delivered in Berkeley, October 25, 

1899, at the Inauguration of President 

Wheeler 



Professor Benjamin I. Wheeler was chosen Presi- 
dent of the University of California in 1899, and in 
the name of the Trustees he invited me to be present 
at his inauguration, which occurred twenty-seven years 
after I had been placed in the same position. On the 
beautiful campus at Berkeley, thousands of persons were 
assembled, and in the open air, toward the end of the 
afternoon they listened to the following remarks. 



XIII 

THE INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT WHEELER AT BERKELEY, 
OCTOBER, 25, 1899 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Board of Regents and 

Faculty; Ladies and Gentlemen ; 

It is a great delight to stand once more before an as- 
semblage of large-hearted and large-minded Californians, 
and, if I should tell you of the emotions that are awakened 
at this moment, before I could close, the sun would not only 
disappear beyond yon grove of eucalyptus, but would sink 
into the Pacific Ocean. 

When the distinguished scholar, whom we now salute 
as President of this great University, invited me, in the 
name of the Board of Regents, to return to Berkeley, the 
home of my early manhood, and to stand upon this platform, 
I asked him what sort of a speech would be expected, and 
he replied : " Tell them your own experiences after leaving 
California." I shall obey him, for he is in the seat of 
authority and entitled to the loyal response of every friend 
upon whom he may call for support and counsel. But 
before I go forward to the principal part of my remarks, 
let us pause for a moment to consider what this occasion 
means. 

Every one of us, without doubt, is filled with curious 
anticipation respecting the new epoch. The students eager 
for knowledge and just awakening with the enthusiasm of 
youth to the charms of science and literature; the parents 
and friends who stand by, ready to make any sacrifice for 
the education of those who are dear to them; the devoted 



/ 
224 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

teachers whose lives are consecrated to the development of 
the intellectual and moral character of those who are under 
their tuition ; the generous givers of their plenty ; the Regents, 
alive to their great responsibility; and the officers of the 
State which has so liberally dealt with its worthy offspring, 
— all whom I see in this vast throng, are deeply concerned 
in the issues of this year. 

Look back only half a century and remember that fifty 
years ago the pioneers of '49, many of them college bred, 
brought to this coast the simple conception of a college as 
they had known it in the Eastern States. Some of them 
were sure that the charm of knowledge was in the past, 
and that the traditional curriculum was the royal road to 
knowledge. Others were certain that in " this new world 
beyond the new world " (as Charles Kingsley called Cali- 
fornia many years ago in his speech on this site), new 
problems demanded new methods of solution. One of these 
pioneers, Henry Durant (the gentlemen on the platform 
will remember him) came, as he said, " with college on the 
brain," and he builded better than he knew. Another, 
Frederick Billings, came with his eyes dazzled by the vision 
of Berkeley and his ears ringing with the familiar quatrain 
which predicts " the course of empire," and secured our 
name. All these and other pioneers, as they planned and 
as they delved and planted, were persuaded by the experience 
of centuries (although they did not always say so), that 
" wisdom is better than gold, yea, than much fine gold." 

Advance the record five and twenty years to 1873. The 
College of California, founded by the men whom I have 
named and their associates, has expanded into the University 
of the State; the restricted plot in Oakland has been ex- 
changed for these broad acres, looking out to the Golden 
Gate; the grounds are consecrated to the higher education 
with speeches from Governor Booth and Bishop Kip, and 
by the graduation of the first of that long file of departing 



PRESIDENT WHEELER 225 

scholars, never to be concluded, whose academic life is 
associated with Berkeley. 

A quarter of a century after the exodus, and half a 
century after the creation, we are now witnesses of the 
dawn of another epoch. It is under these circumstances, 
that a veteran who has bathed in the fountain of youth, 
comes forward to congratulate the University of California 
on this auspicious day, as rich in memories and achievements 
as it is in promises and prospects. 

I congratulate you on the succession of great gifts, which 
have supplemented the appropriations of the State, and 
upon the development of great principles, which have at- 
tracted to this place throngs of young men and maidens 
in the pursuit of a liberal education, while other students 
have been enabled to secure in San Francisco their pro- 
fessional training in the legal and medical sciences and in 
the fine arts. 

With heartiness for which no tones can be too emphatic, 
I congratulate you on the far-sighted munificence of that 
generous woman whose hope it is that the buildings of 
this university shall be worthy of its aims, and who desires 
that they shall not be constructed hap-hazard, as in other 
places the usage has been, but comformable to a plan, 
selected by fair and well-trained judges from plans submitted 
to them by accomplished architects of Europe and America; 
and who has determined by her own munificence to set an 
example that others may emulate. May her purpose be 
as fruitful as the gift of Devorguila, early benefactor of 
a great college in Oxford ; and her name be held in gratitude 
and admiration for centuries to come. 

I congratulate you that you have chosen a President, 
as did the authorities of Leland Stanford University, from 
among scholars who have breathed the inspiring atmosphere 
of Cornell University. It is indeed propitious that these 
two California presidents, President Wheeler and President 



226 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

Jordan, divergent in their studies, yet single in their aims, 
have drunk from the fountains of Ithaca, which were opened 
by one whose love of historical studies is paralleled by his 
devotion to science — that scholar, teacher, statesman, and 
peace-maker, now our minister in Germany, Honourable 
Andrew D. White. 

Few persons know, as I do, what a persistent, sagacious, 
and sensible search the Regents have been making for a 
President. If they were eager to give an example of original 
investigation, which never rests until a finality is reached — 
they could not have done better. But their difficulties did 
not end with their discovery; persuasion was harder than re- 
search. The leader of their choice had received many pre- 
vious calls to which his ear remained deaf. The ties of 
intellectual and social friendship, the assurance that a pro- 
fessor's chair is stable, while a president is usually offered 
that which looks more comfortable, but is really shaky — in 
fact a rocking-chair; and the consciousness that in an old 
State the traditions of higher education are sure of recog- 
nition — were considerations of weight. He has wisely de- 
cided. Greater opportunities on a broader field, the generous 
support of the authorities, and that large-heartedness and 
large-mindedness which have ever been alluring character- 
istics of the Californians, have captured him; and now with 
one voice his friends in the East, his new friends in the 
West, bid him God-speed. Bind him with bands of steel; 
strengthen his hands ; confirm his plans ; listen to his counsel, 
and soon you will know, what you now believe, that the 
right man is here — suggestive, strong, hopeful, wise, and in- 
spiring; ready to promote the vigour, the industries, the 
wealth, the literature, the science, the arts, the politics, 
and the religion of this great State. 

This is not the sort of a speech, President Wheeler, which 
you asked me to make. I have indeed wandered from my 
theme. But I could not help it. Besides, I think that if 



PRESIDENT WHEELER 227 

you are not with me, the assembly is, and that their hearts 
now beat in unison a welcome to Berkeley, to its cares 
and opportunities, to its honours and rewards. 

You asked me to speak of my own observations and 
reflections during the period since I left California. I will 
do so briefly. The growth of scientific laboratories is one 
of the most extraordinary developments of the recent decades. 
Not long ago chemistry was the only science which had this 
adjunct. Now every department which is concerned in 
the investigation of natural forces demands, and in strong 
institutions has secured, the halls in which, the apparatus 
by which laws may be verified, investigations carried on, and 
students made familiar with the processes and methods by 
which mankind reveals the mysteries of nature. Even 
clinical medicine now calls for its laboratory. Psychology 
likewise. Everywhere students are now taught to use their 
own eyes and their own hands. The study of nature, by 
experiment and by observation, has established its place side 
by side with, sometimes a little in advance of, the study of 
mankind. By such studies, not often directly, but always 
indirectly, the great achievements of mechanical and elec- 
trical art have been secured. The methods of correspondence, 
travel, and commerce have gone through a revolution. War- 
fare has been changed, and the war-ship Oregon and her 
sisters have shown that is is possible to win great victories, 
over seas and over enemies, without the sacrifice of the 
victor's blood. Among the achievements of the nineteenth 
century, none is more fertile than the introduction of instru- 
ments of precision, and the employment of measurements 
mathematically accurate. The American laboratories, ob- 
servatories, and surveys are among the best attainments of 
our countrymen, and justify the utterance of German ob- 
servers, that the most important contributions of our 
country to the world are the new developments of univer- 
sity activities. 



228 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

The expansion of our libraries and their adaptation to 
the wants of students have made equal progress with the 
multiplication of laboratories. They have become working 
places, where the experience of mankind is stored up, where 
the latest publications of scholarship are received, where 
youth are trained in the methods of literary investigation, 
and are introduced to " the friendship of books," the inti- 
mate and repose-giving, soul-refreshing, thought-inspiring 
acquaintance with the noblest writings of every age and 
every clime. The time was when the lecture-room was the 
only channel for such introductions; now the sagacious 
teacher supplements his teaching by lessons in the art of 
reading, which is the art of discarding the second best 
and choosing always the very best. With this goes the love 
of history and biography, so that we can readily assent to 
the recent utterance of an English essayist, that the glory 
of which no man can deprive our poor dying s'iecle is that 
not one, of all the others, since history began, has taken 
such pains to understand the centuries previous. 

The natural result of these two movements is seen in 
this, that there is no longer, within the range of public 
audition, any controversy as to the comparative value of 
ancient and modern studies, no question as to the relative 
value of science and letters. All have honourable places. 
Consequently the one curriculum has gone; many roads are 
leading to Rome. 

With these changes, it is interesting to note the clarifi- 
cation of the idea of the university. It may include a col- 
lege; or several colleges; but it is more than a college, 
more than a group of colleges. It is the highest expression 
which any community can give to its intellectual aspirations; 
the most complex, diversified, and fruit-bearing organism 
which any community can devise for the intellectual or 
moral welfare of its people. It is a place where the latest 
science, the noblest literature, and the purest art are em- 



PRESIDENT WHEELER 229 

ployed in the higher education of well-disciplined youth. 
To this clarification of ideas, an admirable contribution was 
made by our honoured colleague, Professor Joseph LeConte, 
in his essay on the School, the College, and the Uni- 
versity. 

The admission of women to the advantage of higher 
education is another of the remarkable changes of recent 
years. The methods differ. Sometimes, usually in the 
Western States, there is unrestricted co-education. In the 
Eastern States there is partial co-education, where certain 
courses of advanced study are open to women, but the 
tendency appears to be more favourable for building up 
separate colleges for women, often like Radcliffe and Bar- 
nard, in connection with or near to the college for men, 
but sometimes independent like Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, 
and Bryn Mawr. Each community has its own problem to 
solve; whatever the method, the world is sure to be the 
better for generously opening to women the opportunities 
from which they have been too long excluded. 

The advancement of professional schools is another re- 
markably promising movement, — especially schools of law 
and medicine. I call special attention to the latter for the 
changes in the medical schools of the East within five years 
past are wonderful, and will surely be followed by this 
University. Prolonged courses of study, high standards of 
admission, ample facilities for observation in laboratories 
and clinics, rigid terms of graduation, enlarged freedom of 
intercourse with skilful teachers selected as the best of 
their profession, are among the changes that are prolific in 
good. 

Again, I mention among the noteworthy changes of the 
last few years, greater liberality on the part of religious 
leaders towards the methods of modern thought, less appre- 
hension, more generous sympathy when science, language, 
and history speak. On the other hand, it is equally worthy 



230 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

of note that intellectual men, whether they be devoted to 
letters, science, law, or education are more and more ready- 
to admit, not only to admit, but to declare, that the things 
which are seen are temporal, and the things that are un- 
seen are eternal; that beneath all forms of worship there is 
a true religion binding man to his Creator; that the mys- 
teries of life are just as great as they were in the days of 
Solomon and Plato. Much more than this, they believe 
that the discoveries of microscope and telescope, the more 
they are prosecuted the more they reveal a plan, and the 
more incomprehensible that plan appears without the belief 
in one living and true God. 

It is delightful to hear an orthodox theologian utter these 
words and to believe that in the minds of most naturalists 
they find a loud echo: 

" If a man can understand the universe in its long un- 
folding, it is because the universe in its long unfolding 
expresses the thoughts of a rational mind that is akin to 
the mind of man that understands it. By the doctrine of 
evolution the universe is for the first time consistently 
represented as a universe of ideas, — that is to say, as an 
expression of God. From of old, Christian faith and doc- 
trine have declared it to be so; but now comes the doctrine 
of evolution to illustrate and confirm the declaration, so 
that it cannot be denied again. To deny the presence of 
mind in the universe is to be belated in the world of evolu- 
tionary thought. If the common man comes to a true con- 
ception of the world he lives in, he will find the day far past 
when he could question the presence and activity of the 
all-comprehending mind." 

May I conclude these remarks with three or four sugges- 
tions? I speak not only to the Faculty and the Regents, 
I speak to all of you who in any way whatever desire to be 
enrolled as friends of learning ; and I say, " Encourage in- 
vestigation." Help everybody who is willing to engage in 



PRESIDENT WHEELER 231 

such work; especially lend a hand in the development of 
the resources and industries of the State. 

Bring hither all the experience of the human race in 
ancient and modern times that the seed may be sifted out 
and planted and the chaff rejected and burned. Establish 
a great library. Cultivate the love of letters. As I say 
these words I see the image of a young poet, too early 
snatched away, who was once a professor of literature in 
this University, Edward R. Sill. I trust that his mantle 
has fallen upon another poet here. I hope that many men 
and women are to come up and make large the column, 
already on the march, of those who have produced a litera- 
ture redolent with the experiences, the hopes, the beauties, 
and the aspirations of the Pacific Coast. 

Encourage, particularly at this time, the development 
of the medical sciences. I doubt if anybody who has not 
had his attention called to the recent progress of medicine 
and surgery has any idea what an epoch is opening before 
us; what trained men and women are coming to the front; 
what new methods of observation and treatment have been 
discovered; what light has been thrown on the causes, the 
prevention, and the cure of disease. It will be a noble 
purpose to extend and strengthen in every possible way the 
medical faculty of this University. 

Remember the importance of politics. I am not afraid 
to use the word " politics," and to urge every young man 
who goes out of college to " go into politics " ; not in the 
sense of aspiring to political office, not in the sense of 
managing men in an unworthy way, but in the sense of 
devotion to the public good. One of the best signs of the 
times is the fact that most of the young men who go out 
from our colleges are interested in public affairs. They 
are on the side of good government; they believe in civil 
service reform ; and they look with hope and not fear toward 
the future of our country. 



232 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

Finally, ladies and gentlemen, face the Pacific Ocean 
and do not be afraid of it. I was startled a few moments 
ago when the chairman read my own predictions of a quarter 
of a century ago. I noticed that one word was left out — 
he did not quote anything about the Philippines. 

( Regent Hallidie — " You mentioned £ the islands of the 
sea.' ") 

He reminds me that I mentioned " the islands of the sea," 
but I do not believe I was thinking of the Philippines. Now, 
for better or worse, for richer or poorer, we are there. 
Yonder is the gateway by which our countrymen are going 
to the Orient. The next five-and-twenty years will cer- 
tainly show vast influences, for good or for evil, on all the 
eastern countries, proceeding from California. Unquestion- 
ably the national government of the future will send out 
as its representatives in Asia, men who have dwelt on these 
shores. Unquestionably the minor offices of government 
will largely be filled with young men going out from this 
region. Your ships are to transport not merchandise only, 
but ideas. Your influences of every sort are to be felt 
in these far distant countries; first in Hawaii, then in the 
Philippines, and afterwards, assuredly, in Japan and China. 

There are two or three things which this University 
can do. It can advocate a pure civil service and the 
selection of competent men for posts of responsibility. An 
English traveller told me not long since, that England 
never awakened to a sense of the importance of good home 
government until her young men were sent to India, and 
there brought into contact with other races, and with men 
of other nations, and were thus forced to show the very 
best qualities which the Anglo-Saxon race possesses. I be- 
lieve that the sending out of our young men to the Orient 
will be the means of promoting a better government at 
home than what we now possess. Civilisation as it goes 
forward will not only need official representatives, — teachers 



PRESIDENT WHEELER 233 

will be called for. There is already the nucleus of a uni- 
versity in Manila ; but it certainly would be propitious if the 
Americans, if the Californians could do as General Kitch- 
ener did at Khartoum — establish a college in Manila, an 
off-shoot of Berkeley and Stanford. 

I must conclude. My message is summed up in these 
words : Uphold and cherish and hand on the idea of liberal 
culture as one of the most important heirlooms which our 
generation possesses. Never say a word to disparage it; 
and if sometimes those in authority seem to check the 
development that we hope for, remember that in every har- 
vest, husks and chaff are mixed with the grains of wheat. 

Let us study the progress of human civilization, remem- 
bering that by ideas the world is governed. They are 
stronger than kings in council, or representatives in Con- 
gress; more enduring than Bills of Right, or written con- 
stitutions, or governments, or treaties, or creeds: they bind 
together men of different speech, of different races, of dif- 
ferent parties; they give unity to human purpose; they pro- 
mote human progress: and universities are the exponents of 
these civilising ideas. We accept them as an inheritance 
from an antiquity we know not how remote ; we pass them on 
to generations we know not how distant, to lands we know 
not how far. 



RESEARCH 

A Speech Delivered at the Convocation of the 
University of Chicago, June, 1903 



XIV 

RESEARCH — A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE CONVOCATION 
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, JUNE, I903 

It is a great privilege, Rector Magnificus, Senatus Acade- 
micuSj to address this Convocation. It would be both easy 
and pleasant to spend the hour in recounting the obligations 
of the entire land to the munificent Founder whose gifts 
are not limited in amount nor restricted to one locality ; and 
to the President and the faculties, whose learning and en- 
thusiasm have secured for this institution such high distinc- 
tion, not only in the United States, but in the world of 
science and letters, as the most suggestive, the most compre- 
hensive, the most successful, and the most hopeful of many 
new foundations among us for the advancement of higher 
education. This city has much to be proud of, much that ex- 
cites the admiration of other places; but there is nothing 
worthier of its pride, its hopes, and its confidence than this 
young and vigorous University to which so many scholars 
have consecrated their lives, to which so many benefactors 
have consecrated their fortunes. 

But I must not be restricted to this theme, however allur- 
ing. I ask you to consider the progress of science in the 
United States of America, as it appears to a watchman on 
the towers, at the beginning of the twentieth century. 

Let me prepare you for an optimistic view, to which I am 
driven by certain disparaging comments that have lately 
been printed. Before I conclude, I shall indicate some of 
the purposes and hopes of the Carnegie Institution that be- 
speak from the scientific workers in this country confidence 
combined with patience and consideration. 

237 



23$ THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

To conciliate an audience which includes many eminent 
specialists, let me disclaim expertness in any branch. Not 
mine the satisfaction of adding to flora or fauna a specimen 
" new to science," nor of discovering an asteroid before un- 
seen; not mine the greater distinction of perceiving and an- 
nouncing relations and laws, hitherto unknown, which 
govern the affinities of matter and the units of force. To 
me electricity and magnetism are mysteries even greater 
than they are to the most able physicists. To weigh the 
stars and measure the velocity of light seems to me an 
achievement as difficult as to write an epic or conquer an em- 
pire. Before the queen of the sciences — abstract mathe- 
matics — I bow my head and kneel uncovered. Yet I am an 
observer of the progress of science, who has had opportunities, 
prolonged and, in some respects, unique, for watching, and 
now and then for helping, the workers, to whom appreciation 
and sympathy could at least be offered ; often pecuniary sup- 
port; once in a while, counsel; sometimes, defence; always, 
admiration. 

Observation from this watchtower will be clearer after 
some of the underbrush which might interrupt our vision 
has been removed. I begin by reminding you that during 
the last century the range of science was vastly extended. 
Its domain is now imperial. When some of us were under- 
graduates science was restricted to the phenomena of the 
visible world, to the study of those objects which might be 
measured by instruments of precision. Chemistry, physics, 
and natural history (to which geology, on the one hand, and 
medicine, on the other, were related) were the chief depart- 
ments. Mathematics, pure and applied, was an entity apart. 
Now all these subjects are subjected to manifold sub- 
divisions, as branches of science; at the same time, a host 
of younger aspirants claim recognition as belonging to the 
parent stem. History, archaeology, geography, meteorology, 
agriculture, philology, psychology, logic, sociology, and even 



kESEARCH 2^9 

jurisprudence and theology, are employing the scientific 
method, with increasing success, and demand recognition in 
the surrogate's court, as the next of kin. Conservative ob- 
servers of nature, and especially the workers in laboratories 
and museums, may look askance at these newcomers, as the 
aristocracy regard the nouveaux riches, and as bearers of 
armorial bearings, worn since the crusades, regard the 
heraldic escutcheons which are fabricated to-day. Yet may 
we not claim that this vast expansion of the scientific method 
is one of the most remarkable and one of the most propi- 
tious gains of the nineteenth century? To the doctrine of 
evolution, and its great expounders, the advance is largely 
due. Nevertheless, while the old line between the sciences 
and the humanities may be invisible as the equator, it has an 
existence as real. On the one side are cognitions which may 
be submitted to demonstrative proof; which do not depend 
upon opinion, preference, or authority ; which are true every- 
where and all the time; while on the other side are cogni- 
tions which depend upon our spiritual natures, our aesthetic 
preferences, our intellectual traditions, our religious faith. 
Earth and man, nature and the supernatural, letters and 
science, the humanities and the realities, are the current 
terms of contrast between the two groups, and there are 
no signs that these distinctions will ever vanish. Apparently 
mankind will continue to enjoy the great productions of 
literature, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture, with- 
out regard to the brains that produced these delight-giving 
works; and humanity will cultivate the sentiments of affec- 
tion, loyalty, and worship, without regard to the pulsations 
of the heart and the reactions of our nervous systems. 

Moreover, the opposition which science encountered from 
theology died, or at least became moribund, in the nineteenth 
century. In the twentieth, only memories will survive of 
the dogmatism which endeavoured to stifle in their helpless- 
ness, like the babes in the tower, those infant sciences, as- 



2 4 o THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

tronomy, geology, biology, and evolution. The story of past 
conflicts and of steady triumphs, is it not related in the 
volumes of Andrew D. White ? The attitude of to-day, is it 
not shown in the recent speech of Lord Kelvin, and in the 
Autobiography of Joseph Le Conte? 

Again, the dread of science, as a dominant factor in higher 
education, which was prevalent in the early part of the nine- 
teenth century, has reached the vanishing point. " Bread- 
and-butter studies " are no longer spoken of in derision, as 
they were in my undergraduate days. 

All this is general, applicable to other lands as well as to 
our own. Now, when we restrict our vision to this country, 
specific considerations become so obvious that I need only 
mention them. 

These among others are conditions favourable to the ad- 
vancement of science among us: 

The diffusion of popular education, securing an army of 
intelligent people, among whom the elect discoverers and in- 
vestigators are constantly appearing. 

The general acceptance of elective courses in schools of all 
grades, especially in colleges, so that individual wants and 
personal aptitudes may be provided for. This is a triumph 
of the last thirty years. 

The readiness of the United States Government, and of 
many separate States, especially in the West, to contribute 
liberally to the support of applied science. An enumeration 
of the resources of the national capital, made here two years 
ago, shows what Congress is willing to do: for one depart- 
ment of investigation a million and a quarter dollars in one 
year! Another sign is found in the growth of agricultural 
colleges and experiment stations throughout the land, and 
the development of the Department of Agriculture. Another 
sign is the growth of State universities. 

The admission of educated women — not in exceptional 
cases, but in considerable and increasing numbers — to the 



RESEARCH 241 

opportunities of original investigation for which, in certain 
departments, they show marked adaptation and for which 
they can readily prepare themselves in the colleges for 
women. 

The establishment of libraries, museums, laboratories, and 
observatories by the munificent and unparalleled generosity 
of American citizens. 

The sharp distinction between collegiate and university 
ideals. 

With these favourable conditions there are some that are 
unfavourable. The remuneration afforded to the leading ex- 
ponents of science is for the most part quite inadequate. 
Larger salaries, with pensions for old age and disability, 
with provision for widows and children, are much to be 
desired. Suitable recognition for scientific attainments is 
still wanting. 

The great demand upon the educated and intellectual 
classes of our country for service in financial and industrial 
incorporations, where compensation of a liberal amount is 
assured, absorbs much ability. Many young scholars, who 
might rise to distinction if their talents were devoted to 
literature and science, are diverted from these fascinating 
but unremunerative careers by the necessity that they fore- 
see of securing a competence, perhaps, in some case, by a 
preference, inherited or caught by infection, for that luxury 
which modern society encourages to the neglect of old-fash- 
ioned economy, moderation, and repose. 

As science can have no rapid development without prompt 
publication, it is well that many periodicals devoted to re- 
search are now maintained in this country; but it is a mis- 
fortune that many of them appear under such restrictions that 
they have very limited circulation, and that often the edi- 
torial supervision is so inadequate that the elimination of poor 
material and the condensation of that which is good are neg- 
lected. We are prone to " printing without publishing.'* 



242 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

Consequently our journals are not as widely read abroad or 
at home as they should be. In the next stage of progress 
there will be an agreement among the leading editors and 
publishers to appear as co-operators, and not as rivals, in the 
use of the printing-press. We may be sure that the law of 
the survival of the fittest will soon prevail. 

Under these conditions a new term has become current in 
our academic vocabulary, the term " research." It is a new 
term, not a new idea, for Herodotus and Aristotle, Roger 
Bacon and Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and Linnaeus, 
Franklin and Rumford, and hosts of American forerunners 
and contemporaries, eager in the pursuit of knowledge, 
have made contributions to the storehouses of mankind which 
still furnish seed-corn to the cultivators and experience to 
experimenters. " Research " is not a felicitous term. 
Neither, for that matter, is the term " university," which 
originally meant the entire body, or corporation, of civic, 
ecclesiastical, or educational authorities. Centuries ago the 
world gave its preference to " university " and turned a cold 
shoulder upon studium generale. Apparently, " research " 
has likewise come to stay. 

The word was presented to the English-speaking world in 
1875 in a volume entitled The Endowment of Research, by 
Dr. Appleton, an English scholar. We have the authority 
of his learned associate, the humanist Mark Pattison, for say- 
ing that it was then a new conception made popular under 
the term " research." " The term," he remarks, " is inap- 
propriate enough, but, like all complex conceptions, no one 
word in the language is anything like adequate to cover this 
conception; yet some one word must be employed when we 
want to speak much of the thing." Whatever results may 
have followed in England, the arguments of Pattison and Ap- 
pleton and their associates had a very strong influence upon 
the organisation of one American university in the year 18765 
and since that time the conception of " research " has spread 



RESEARCH 243 

throughout our land from peak to peak like the signal fires 
described by the Greek dramatists. 

I wish it were possible even now to use the words " in- 
vestigation " and " investigators," but certainly something 
more than an act of the legislature will be required before 
the child can throw off the name by which it has been chris- 
tened. Even that suggested is not very good. The " ad- 
vancement of knowledge " was Lord Bacon's phrase, adopted 
by the founder of the Smithsonian Institution for the " ad- 
vancement and diffusion of knowledge." " Creative action," 
says President Eliot, was the phrase of Ralph Waldo Emer- 
son. " Constructive scholarship " is proposed by Miinster- 
berg. With the word " research " has come the supplemen- 
tary " research assistants," and in every laboratory of the land 
funds are demanded for their compensation. Evidently the 
young aspirant, at the outset of his career, requires control, 
or at least the counsel of a more learned and experienced 
person, or his production will be a memoir of busy idleness. 
Counting the threads of a carpet, or the grains in a bushel of 
sand, may add iotas to knowledge, but it will be to the do- 
main of useless knowledge. Doing what has already been 
well done is a waste of energy, though we call it research. 
Time given to isolated and unrelated inquiries is a bad in- 
vestment. On the other hand, genius will propose its own 
path, will ask its own hard questions, and proceed by its own 
methods to answer them. 

We often hear discussions as to the relation of instruction 
to research. Sterile intellects attribute their non-produc- 
tiveness to overwork, when a more acute diagnosis detects 
a lack of will-power. Will-weakness is as common as neu- 
rasthenia. None of our college faculties are perfectly im- 
mune from this infection. It must be admitted that serious 
administrative duties are impediments to prolonged work in 
the laboratory or the library; but instruction is not adminis- 
tration. Svlyester, the great mathematician, said that his 



244 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

mind was never so fertile as when excited by the queries and 
criticisms of his pupils; and scores of our eminent contem- 
poraries would say so, too. On the other hand, certain 
minds have done their best work without pedagogical obli- 
gations. Darwin, Lyell, and Hooker form a conspicuous 
trio of the non-professorial class. Herbert Spencer drew no 
stipend. Willard Gibbs won distinction before he won a 
salary of a thousand dollars. The astronomer Hill needed 
no outside impulse; his was the rare power of self-fertilisa- 
tion. Dana was famous as a naturalist long before he was a 
professor. No absolute rule can be laid down more explicit 
than this, let those who have the duties of a professorship 
discharge them well ; and those who have leisure be sure that 
it is not wasted. 

Let us now consider how well prepared this country is for 
scientific research or productive scholarship. Certain favour- 
able conditions are obvious. Some may be indicated, — wide- 
spread, almost universal, education furnishing a large body 
of well-instructed persons, from whom recruits may be 
drafted; freedom from the restrictions of an established 
church and from governmental impediment; general recogni- 
tion of the importance of scientific inquiry; in many direc- 
tions^ — liberal outlays by the nation and by States; munifi- 
cent endowments from individuals, becoming, as the years 
roll on, more liberal in amount and more liberal in scope; 
noteworthy indications of versatility, ingenuity, adaptability 
and patience on the part of American youth ; unselfish readi- 
ness to enter upon unremunerative careers for the pleasure of 
living in devotion to science ; and a newspaper press eager to 
make public every new birth. 

Nor is this all. Our equipments are good; collections of 
books and periodicals are very large and well chosen ; museums 
of natural history are rapidly increasing; our astronomical 
instruments are unsurpassed; our physical and chemical 
laboratories have all the requirements of modern science. 



RESEARCH 245 

If I may be allowed to use a word from the market-place, we 
have an extensive plant, facilities adequate to a very large 
business. Perhaps the plant is greater than is requisite to- 
day. No matter. Darwin wrote to Thistleton-Dyer, in 
1878, these words: 

I have a very strong opinion that it would be the greatest possible 
pity if the physiological laboratory, now that it has been built, 
were not supplied with as many good instruments as your funds 
can possibly afford. It is quite possible that some of them may be- 
come antiquated before they are much or even at all used. But 
this does not seem to me any argument at all against getting them, 
for the laboratory cannot be used until well provided; and the mere 
fact of the instruments being ready may suggest to someone to use 
them. You at Kew, as guardians and promoters of botanical science, 
will then have done all in your power, and if your laboratory is not 
used, the disgrace will lie at the feet of the public. But until bitter 
experience proves the contrary, I will never believe that we are so 
backward. 

When Rowland was asked to select the apparatus for the 
new university to which he was called, he bought freely the 
costliest instruments of precision. The supply preceded the 
demand; the demand appeared at once. An amusing illus- 
tration of the conservative hold-back is given by President 
Loudon in a recent admirable appeal for the recognition of 
research in the universities of Canada : " An English pro- 
fessor, himself a classical scholar (on an occasion so recent 
as the establishment of the physical laboratory in the Uni- 
versity of Toronto) , inquired : * Why go to the expense of 
purchasing this elaborate equipment, until the physicists have 
made an end of making discoveries ? ' " No American 
scholar could have asked that question. 

The size of a college has nothing to do with the progress 
of investigation. I read, for example, that a recent traveller 
who had reached Lassa, in Thibet, found near the forbidden 
shrine three institutions where fifteen thousand monks are 
engaged in learned pursuits. In one of these, six thousand 



246 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

boys, young men and grey-bearded patriarchs are studying 
theology; yet not one contribution to science has ever come 
from that focus of Buddhist lore, though Dalai Lama is the 
living Buddha. I remember that the Royal Institution in 
London, without any students, gave rooms to Young, Davy, 
Faraday, Tyndall, Rayleigh, and Dewar — a truly apostolic 
succession. Agassiz and Guyot won their distinction in the 
fresh-water college of Neufchatel. Princeton was an un- 
developed institution when Joseph Henry made his funda- 
mental discoveries in electro-magnetism. Yale had a very 
meagre equipment in books and instruments when Olmsted, 
Herrick, and Newton made their discoveries in respect to 
meteoric showers and the origin of comets. Liebig's renown 
was established in the little laboratory which still stands as 
his proud monument, at Giessen, long before he was called to 
Munich. Scores of such instances might readily be cited. 
Indeed, the facts are so obvious that a false exaggeration de- 
clares that the progress of science varies inversely as the size 
of the laboratory: the larger the place and the more the 
students, the more arduous the administration and the more 
frequent the interruptions. It has been wittily said that 
Boston is not a place, but a state of mind. So I would say : 
Research depends upon a state of mind, and not on the 
laboratory or the instruments. 

With all the advantages that have been enumerated, how 
are we succeeding? Listen to a brilliant exotic, Professor 
Miinsterberg, who declares that the " idea of continental 
Europe, in regard to the productive scholars of the New 
World, can be as easily as briefly stated," and then he makes 
this formidable announcement, which he calls " the idea of 
continental Europe," in respect to American scholarship. It 
is summed up in three ominous words : " There is none." 

An American, long resident in Europe, Carl Snyder, sings 
the same dirge. " America's position in the world of science 
is inferior " are his words. " Why has the United States so 



RESEARCH 247 

slight a share in the marvellous scientific advance of the cen- 
tury ? " is his significant inquiry. Several pages are devoted 
to the delineation of this failure. 

I do not know by what processes of telepathy or wireless 
telegraphy this " idea of continental Europe," in respect to 
productive scholarship in America, can be reduced to three 
words: "There is none." I prefer to scan the list of 
Americans who have received the highest honours of the 
academies of sciences in Europe — honours which are bestowed 
only for important contributions to knowledge. Begin 
with the names of Franklin and Rumford, then read the roll 
continued in our day by the names of Joseph Henry, Louis 
Agassiz, Asa Gray, Joseph Leidy, Benjamin Peirce, James D. 
Dana, Hubert A. Newton, James Hall, O. C. Marsh, 
Henry A. Rowland, Joseph E. Keeler, Willard Gibbs, and 
by scores of living investigators now active in every part of 
the land. 

Here let me pay a tribute of friendship and admiration 
to one of our countrymen who has just departed, having at- 
tained to the highest rank among the mathematical physicists 
of the world — Willard Gibbs, whose eminence, like that of 
Sir Isaac Newton, will be more and more conceded as time 
rolls on. 

He was an authority upon themes of great importance and 
difficulty in a domain where the door is open only to those 
who can give the pass-word as past-masters in a science most 
profound, where his leadership was that of exploration and 
conquest, where his distinction is acknowledged by the most 
distinguished physicists in Europe and America. There is 
good authority for saying that " by a wonderful exercise of 
scientific imagination and logical power he predicted the 
greater part of the science of physical chemistry." His 
creation of the vector analysis is equally remarkable. Pro- 
fessor Ostwald, one among the foremost, says of the work 
of Professor Gibbs in thermo-dynamics : "Untouched 



248 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

treasures, in the greatest variety and of the greatest import- 
ance, to the theoretical as well as to the experimental in- 
vestigator, still lie within its pages." 

This is not the place for the enumeration of other sub- 
jects which were enriched by his genius. At the moment, we 
can only place the name of Willard Gibbs among the fore- 
most of American intellects at the opening of this century, 
and commend to younger men his life and example. In his 
crown are seven precious stones — Genius, Training, Resolu- 
tion, Self-dependence, Perseverance, Modesty, and Success. 

In academic circles Chauvinism is offensive, and I would 
not venture thus to speak of the achievements of our country- 
men, were it not that derogatory remarks have been received 
with applause by a chorus of pessimists ; were it not time that 
the voice of the optimists should be heard in the land. Under 
these circumstances you will perhaps listen without censure 
to these concluding remarks. To illustrate American ac- 
tivities in science, I would dwell upon the progress made in 
the study of our vast domain between two oceans, to the 
knowledge acquired of its coasts, harbours, rivers, lakes ; of its 
valleys, plains, hills, and mountain ranges; of its mineral de- 
posits, and of the slow processes by which the terrestrial fea- 
tures have been moulded and modified. I would recall what 
has been done beyond our own territory, in surveys of the 
Atlantic and Pacific seas, and in the Levant. I would enu- 
merate the memoirs in which the flora and the fauna of this 
continent have been enumerated and described — the mollusks, 
the crustaceans, the fishes, the reptiles, the birds, and the 
mammalia living and palaeozoic; the mosses, the ferns, the 
algae, the flowers, the shrubs, and the forests. I would point 
to the study of the weather and the climate, and our con- 
tributions to the laws of meteorology. I would follow 
American explorers in their near approach to the north pole, 
and go with others to Alaska and eastern Siberia. I would 
summon a great company of American archaeologists and 



RESEARCH 249 

ethnologists engaged in the scrutiny of primitive man. I 
would remember that this earth is a star among the stars, 
and enumerate the contributions to astronomical science which 
have been made by observing the starry heavens and in the 
quiet studies of able mathematicians. The work of our 
chemists should not be overlooked, nor the fact that one of 
the most brilliant among them has declined a chair in a 
German university offered to him in recognition of his re- 
searches. In the field of physics some of our most gifted 
countrymen should be named and mention should be made 
of their investigations of the velocity of light, in spectrum 
analysis, in the mechanical equivalent of heat, in the de- 
termination of electrical units, and in other abstract, 
far-reaching studies of fundamental laws. I would show 
that the group of studies called biological has not been 
overlooked, and would name the memoirs and treatises in 
minute anatomy, neurology, embryology, morphology, and 
physiology which have come from the laboratories of biology, 
and the fruitful results of bacteriological and pathological 
studies which have resulted in the partial or complete con- 
trol of certain infectious diseases. Nor would I forget the 
contributions to classical and Semitic archaeology which 
Americans have made and are making, and to the distinction 
won by William Dwight Whitney and his followers in com- 
parative philology, and to the impulse given to Biblical 
studies by Dr. Harper, the head of this university. 

Two new forces have lately been introduced, which will 
prove to be supplemental to those already at work in our best 
universities and colleges. One of these, an institution de- 
voted to pathological investigation, is due to the founder of 
this university, Mr. John D. Rockefeller. The other is an 
establishment for the aid of scientific investigation in any 
part of the country — the munificent gift of Mr. Andrew 
Carnegie. His many gifts for varied purposes had already 
secured the gratitude due to a prince of philanthropists, and 



250 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

he now enrolls his name among the foremost promoters of 
knowledge. His new endowment had no precursor and no 
parallel. Rumford's gifts in the eighteenth century and 
Smithson's in the nineteenth were its near of kin. The large 
amount attracted universal attention, but the purposes re- 
ceived still greater applause. Mr. Carnegie had the sagacity 
to perceive that education and investigation are distinct func- 
tions of civilised life; and that they may be promoted by 
different corporations. He differentiated the two chief ob- 
jects of a university — instruction and research. He did not 
intimate that these two functions must always be separated. 
Nobody thinks so. They may be united. He merely gave 
emphasis to research in these words: 

It is proposed to found, in the city of Washington, an institution 
which, with the cooperation of institutions now or hereafter es- 
tablished there or elsewhere, shall in the broadest and most liberal 
manner encourage investigation, research, and discovery; show the 
application of knowledge to the improvement of mankind; provide 
such buildings, laboratories, books, and apparatus, as may be needed; 
and afford instruction of an advanced character to students properly 
qualified to profit thereby. 

When asked if he wished his gift to be restricted to our 
countrymen, " No," was his prompt and wise response ; 
" Science is not limited by geographical boundaries." 

Let me conclude by repeating statements already made. 
Science, in the United States, at the beginning of the 
twentieth century has such a vantage-ground as it never oc- 
cupied before. Laboratories of investigation have been 
opened; instruments of precision have been multiplied and 
improved; universities no longer give undue reverence to the 
written word; schools of science and for technical training 
have been organised; general education has improved; 
museums are well endowed and arranged ; journals have been 
established for great departments of knowledge and for 
minute specialties. Men of letters no longer regard the 



RESEARCH 251 

men of science as but half-educated ; and the organised forces 
of religion no longer array themselves against the progress of 
inquiry. The spirit of science is recognised by individuals 
and governments. A few objections are heard, Vox et 
praterea nihil. Science is accepted as synonymous with exact 
knowledge. Truth takes the place of tradition. The 
study of nature has usurped the throne of human authority. 
Mankind has attained to a clearer knowledge of the great 
Omnipresence; so that many men of many minds find in an 
ancient Credo the best expression of their knowledge and their 
faith: " I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of 
Heaven and Earth, and of all things visible and invisible." 
In the confidence, not always orally expressed, that science 
is the discoverer and interpreter of this divine order, men de- 
vote themselves, with the ardour of enthusiasm which has 
never been surpassed, to searching and researching, hoping 
and believing, almost knowing, that every step of progress 
contributes to the welfare of humanity, to the physical, in- 
tellectual, moral, and social improvement of the race. The 
twentieth century begins with these auspicious expectations. 
May it produce, in our country, many great benefactors, 
many wise and buoyant leaders, working hand in hand, 
many a brilliant discoverer, many a true philosopher. 



THE DAWN OF A UNIVERSITY 



WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY 

In 1882 the Western Reserve College, which had 
long been maintained at Hudson, in Ohio, was removed 
to Cleveland, and took its position there as the Western 
Reserve University. Adelbert College was then 
founded by Mr. Amasa Stone for the purpose of con- 
tinuing under more favourable circumstances the college 
work that had been initiated many years before at 
Hudson. He chose the name " Adelbert College " to 
commemorate his son, Adelbert Stone, a student in the 
Sheffield Scientific School in New Haven of the Class 
of 1866. 



THE DAWN OF A UNIVERSITY 

It is just twenty years since a lad in health and good spirits, 
full of promise and hope, favoured by talents, the surround- 
ings of a good home, and the prospect of future indepen- 
dence, left this city to pursue his studies in a department of 
Yale College. Three years later his lifeless body, rescued 
from a watery grave, was brought home to be buried. His 
friends mourned for him in the familiar lines of Milton 
on the drowning of Lycidas. 

To-day his father builds this monument, Adelbert Col- 
lege, where other Cleveland youth will remember and emu- 
late the character of that bright scholar, strong, versatile, 
buoyant, brave, studious, patriotic Christian. 

When I was invited to deliver this address I asked for 
reminiscences from one who was a student with Adelbert 
at the Sheffield Scientific School. He sent me a glowing 
account of his early friend. Speaking of the resolutions of 
the Berzelius Society, to which Adelbert Stone belonged, he 
goes on to say : " I notice among these resolutions one that 
1 his memory shall ever remain green and fragrant in our 
hearts.' The memory of my friend is green and fragrant in 
my heart to-day. I can scarcely realise that more than 
seventeen years have passed since, side by side, we entered 
that fatal river. As I read the words written with youthful 
warmth of feeling, and under the immediate shadow of that 
great sorrow, I have no inclination to withdraw a single 
word or letter from the warmest testimonials of love and es- 
teem then rendered. On the contrary, I can at this distance 

255 



256 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

of time, and with larger experience of life, the more fully 
appreciate the rare and beautiful symmetry of young Stone's 
character; and yet the mellowing effect of time is not needed 
to obliterate from the recollection of him any unloveliness 
of character or unkindness of act." 

With such memories as these, with such an enduring 
monument as crowns yon noble site, and with such bright 
prospects as attend the opening of Adelbert College, may 
we not change our lamentation for less mournful notes, 
and from the poem whence his dirge was chosen, sing: 

". . . weep no more, 
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, ; 

Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor; 
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 
And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 
And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore 
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky; 
So Lycidas sank low, but mounted high." 

To the fact that I was then an officer of Yale College, 
and a friend of Adelbert's, my presence here is doubtless 
due. But the way I can best honour him, and second the 
generous purpose of his father, is to lead this community 
to a consideration of the rare opportunity before them. It 
has been my good fortune to be a participant in developing 
a new department in an old college, the Sheffield Scientific 
School at Yale ; in planting germs from old oaks in the new 
soil of California; and in shaping a new university on the 
border land of North and South. As I recall the exuberance 
of hope and purpose which inspires the teachers in these seats 
of learning, I am reminded of lines in Home's poem of 
"Orion," 

" 'Tis always Morning somewhere in the world, 
And Eos ever rises, circling 
The varied regions of mankind." 

It is morning now on the meridian of Cleveland, and 



DAWN OF A UNIVERSITY 257 

we are looking at the Dawn of a University. This suggests 
my theme. 

The responsibilities of those who undertake to organise 
the higher education in any community are very serious. 
They are acting not only for the present, but for subse- 
quent generations. Their work is not restricted to the in- 
stitutions they found; it pervades society, it holds up certain 
standards of culture, it moulds the character of those who 
are to be of influence in the affairs of church and state, it 
quickens or retards the progress of useful knowledge, it 
diffuses a love of literature and science, it produces abstract 
thoughts which by and by bear fruit in the affairs of practi- 
cal life. In short, the highest school in any region is like 
the light-house of the harbour, giving warning and en- 
couragement to the mariner, and serving equally the interests 
of those who are guided by its beams and those who are wait- 
ing on shore for the cargoes from distant climes. Fortu- 
nately these responsibilities are never committed to an in- 
dividual, however high may be his station, or however great 
his knowledge, his wealth, or his character. They are dis- 
tributed among the persons who provide the requisite funds, 
men like Case and Stone, who have been so generous in this 
city; the trustees, who guide the general policy of the 
institution, and have the final voice in the selection of offi- 
cers; and the faculty on whom devolve the government and 
instruction of the youth. Even these three united powers, 
the founders, the curators, and the teachers, have not su- 
preme authority. They are themselves controlled by pub- 
lic opinion, which may be enlightened and sympathetic, or 
cold and prejudiced; they are influenced by the usages now 
prevalent in other institutions, which may not be approved, 
but cannot be disregarded; and they are fettered by tradi- 
tions, ideas worked out long ago, and under very different 
circumstances from those in which we dwell, bad ideas 



258 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

mixed up with good in an intricate tangle of tares and wheat, 
but all possessed of a vitality surpassing that of written 
enactments, and underlying all conclusions in respect to 
instruction. 

We may consider it unfortunate that the ultimate con- 
clusions of men who have grown old in the service of our 
colleges have not been fully recorded, and that younger 
and less distinguished men have no convenient professional 
repository for the registration of their views on important 
pedagogical and educational doctrines. We have a great 
many school journals, voluminous reports, and innumerable 
conventions, but we have no digest. We cannot, for ex- 
ample, turn to any cyclopaedia, or treatise, or scientific serial, 
or to the proceedings of any society, or to any set of annual 
registers, or even to any bibliography, and feel confident 
that we have been directed to the latest and wisest utter- 
ances of those who are entitled to speak by authority. We 
must search through piles of dusty pamphlets, we must enter 
into a wide correspondence, or we must travel extensively 
from college to college, if we would approximate to a 
thorough understanding of the opinions respecting the prin- 
ciples and methods of higher education, received in this 
country; and particularly if we would try to discriminate 
between that which is, because it has been, and that which is, 
because it ought to be. The progress of education is thus 
seriously retarded; we go over and over the same inquiries 
which our friends have been over before; we listen to 
speeches which add nothing new to the common stock; and 
worse still, we keep making experiments which have been 
made before, without being able to inform ourselves as to 
what has been already proved. It is not thus that science 
makes its giant strides. Every point gained by the student 
of nature is placed on record, where it may be studied, and 
verified, or controverted; every new discovery is registered, 
every significant fact is written down, every law is stated. 



DAWN OF A UNIVERSITY 259 

The chemist has in a convenient nook of his laboratory a few 
sets, that are lengthening every month, of journals in dif- 
ferent modern languages, and to them he turns with the ut- 
most confidence of discovering all that the science of chemis- 
try has accomplished in any line of investigation. The 
mathematician has his journals ; so have the physicist and the 
biologist. But we teachers and college managers, when we 
are placed in new and critical circumstances, and have some 
vital problem to solve, when some great and unusual gift is 
offered to us, some radical change of base is proposed, some 
enlarged opportunity unexpectedly stands opened, are often 
at a loss to know what the wisest men of our profession would 
advise, and where to look for indications of their experience 
on points which are kindred to those we are interested in. 
He will be a great benefactor of American colleges who 
gives us a series of reports of cases argued and decided in the 
high tribunals of education. We should there find the ex- 
perience of Harvard and Yale, of Princeton and Cornell, of 
Ann Arbor and Berkeley, of Charlottesville and Johns 
Hopkins. Without such a repository or index, who can dis- 
cover what advantages or disadvantages came from the re- 
moval of the university from the heart of a town to a subur- 
ban site, as in California? who can find out, at a distance, 
why the Sheffield Scientific School has maintained a vigorous 
independent life, and the Lawrence Scientific School has 
been so greatly over-shadowed by or absorbed in the academic 
foundation to which it is allied? who can know why 
William and Mary College lost its hold upon Virginia, and 
yielded to a State university the position to which its early 
origin entitled it? who can discriminate among the innova- 
tions which were introduced at Cornell University, and tell 
how many of its bright and progressive ideas have been fol- 
lowed by other institutions? how can the record of the Uni- 
versity of Michigan be compared with that of other State 
universities, for the benefit of Texas, Nebraska, and other 



26o THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

States which are endeavouring to enter upon like undertak- 
ings? who can explain why certain promising foundations, 
like the universities of Albany and Troy, were so soon aban- 
doned, while others, far less hopeful, continued to live? These 
are but examples of inquiries into the experience of our own 
country which the managers of every kindred foundation 
should make. If I am not mistaken, the result of such an 
investigation would establish several principles so clearly 
that they might almost be called the laws of higher educa- 
tion. Nobody enacted them; nobody can repeal them. 
They are the common law of our colleges. Some day a 
diligent student will come forward and reduce them to for- 
mal statements, and be to subsequent writers the Newton or 
the Grotius of educational doctrine. 

Two or three such principles among the many to be de- 
duced may be mentioned here as fundamental to all progress. 
In the first place the chief value of a college is in the 
intellectual training which it gives to those who follow its 
courses. In another connection I may discuss the various 
claims of different subjects, but here, in the very front of our 
reflections, I wish to repeat the old idea that the youth who 
are to pursue an intellectual life must receive prolonged men- 
tal discipline from those who are competent to give it. They 
must be taught to face difficulties and overcome them. On 
this point I believe that the college teachers in civilised coun- 
tries are agreed; their differences have reference to methods 
only, and particularly to the question whether mental power 
may not be developed just as well by one subject or course 
of study as by another. 

Closely related to this doctrine is a second — that moral 
and religious training should be coincident with intellectual 
discipline. It does not follow that colleges should be ec- 
clesiastical foundations, or that attendance upon involun- 
tary acts of worship is essential. But it does mean that while 
youth are forming their habits of body and mind, they are 



DAWN OF A UNIVERSITY 261 

also forming their habits of moral and spiritual life, and 
should be taught, not necessarily in the college, but simulta- 
neously with their collegiate lessons, to build on firm foun- 
dations their ethical conduct and their religious faith. 

A third accepted doctrine is this: Intellectual progress, 
like physical growth, depends on a judicious diet, which 
must be varied not only to please the palate, but to pro- 
mote the health. Four groups of subjects are now-a-days 
freely offered to the students' choice, mathematics, the physi- 
cal and natural sciences, language, and the historical and 
moral sciences. Not one of these can well be omitted. The 
reader of a recent discussion in England on the comparative 
claims or merits of literature and science might suppose that 
there was a perpetual conflict between two rivals, and that 
peace would not be established until one or the other of the 
high contending forces had surrendered. I am reminded of 
the old dilemma as to what will happen when an irresistible 
force meets an immovable body. The claims of science are 
certainly irresistible; the claims of literature unyielding. 
What will happen if they conflict ? We had better avoid the 
issue by employing both these forces in alliance, for the pro- 
motion of intellectual and moral culture. 

It is fortunately not necessary in this community to 
defend the fundamental ideas of liberal education, for by 
observation and experience you know the worth of col- 
leges and are endeavouring, individually and collectively, to 
promote them in the most efficient way. But as it is always 
well to have a reason for the faith which is in us, I ask you 
to dwell for a few minutes on the motives which lead to such 
movements and such endowments as we here and now observe. 

In the first place, we should consider the benefit bestowed 
upon the youth who are thus trained. Sceptics in regard 
to higher education may point to Shakespeare, with his 
little Latin and less Greek; to Franklin, the philosopher and 
statesman, with his homely English and poor French; to 



262 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

Grote, the historian of Greece, who had no academic life; 
to Whittier, Howells, and Cable, our own gifted contempo- 
raries, and to many more writers who never went to college ; 
and I confess that such examples seem at first to show that 
colleges are not essential to literary culture. But we must 
remember that our institutions are not devised for an oli- 
garchy of intellect, but for a democracy; not for a few royal 
dignitaries, but for a throng of faithful workers. In a 
recent biography of Spinoza you may meet this pithy saying: 
" The secret workings of nature, which bring it to pass 
that an iEschylus, a Leonardo, a Faraday, a Kant, or a 
Spinoza is born upon earth are as obscure now as they were 
a thousand years ago ; " and if this be admitted, surely col- 
leges are not to be built up and maintained for such extraordi- 
nary phenomena. We call these men gifted; we say they 
have genius; we except them from rules. They will win 
renown under any circumstances, hindered, but not re- 
pressed, by acting parts in a theatre, like Shakespeare; or 
setting type in a printing house, like Franklin ; or managing 
a bank, like Grote; or learning the trade of a book-binder, 
like Faraday. It is neither for the genius nor for the dunce, 
but for the great middle class possessing ordinary talents 
that we build colleges; and it can be proved beyond the 
shadow of a doubt that for them the opportunities afforded by 
libraries, teachers, companionship, and the systematic recur- 
rence of intellectual tasks are most efficient means of intel- 
lectual culture. Mental discipline may indeed be acquired 
in other ways; the love of letters is not implanted by a col- 
lege; the study of nature may be pursued alone in the open 
air; but given to each one in a group of a hundred youths, 
a certain amount of talent, more than mediocrity and less than 
genius, — that is to say, the average ability of a boy in our high 
schools and academies, and it will happen in nine cases out of 
ten, that those who go to college surpass the others during 
the course of life, in influence, in learning, in the power to do 



DAWN OF A UNIVERSITY 263 

good, and in the enjoyment of books, nature, and art. Men- 
tal powers may be developed in other places — the me- 
chanics' institute, the mercantile library, the winter lyceum, 
the private study, the gatherings of good men, in the haunts 
of business, and in the walks of civil life, but not so easily, 
nor so systematically, nor so thoroughly, nor so auspiciously, 
nor so pleasantly. With all their defects, colleges are the 
best agencies which the world has ever devised for the train- 
ing of the intellectual forces of youth. 

But this is not all that colleges effect. Let us in the 
second place remember that they hold up before succes- 
sive generations all that has been inherited from the past. 
So long as our religious faith is based upon the sacred 
Scriptures, so long must we train up men who can ex- 
pound to us the Greek and Hebrew writings. The history 
of the Christian church would be a sealed book were 
there not scholars to interpret the Greek and Latin fathers. 
The charm of Homer, the dramas of Sophocles, the elo- 
quence of Demosthenes would be dead indeed if our scholars 
neglected Greek. The rediscovery of the Pandects of Jus- 
tinian exerted upon modern society an influence which 
cannot be estimated. We should be hardly conscious of 
our kinship with other nations were the study of comparative 
philology neglected. Our own government and laws can- 
not be understood unless traced to their sources in early 
English and Teutonic ways. Our most familiar ideas of 
social life, the village community, the constable, the select- 
man, the parish, even the pound, have all been shown to be 
historic growths, or survivals from ancient developments, 
and, to appreciate their hold upon us, we must know their 
history. Colleges cherish such studies. They encourage 
their teachers to understand Man, his origin, his nature, 
his deeds, his possibilities, his destiny. One great group of 
studies used to be always called " the Humanities " — a name 
that should not be allowed to perish. Colleges remind us of 



264 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

the conditions of permanent success. They keep us familiar 
with the writers, the orators, the philosophers, the discoverers 
of every age and in every land, and they hold up to our 
thought this divine all-illuminating truth: "Beyond the 
things which are seen and temporal are the things which are 
unseen and eternal." 

A good college gives training in the arts of expression, 
as well as in those of observation; it not only favours the 
acquisition of knowledge by its students, but it shows them 
how to bring forth their knowledge for the benefit of others. 
This function of a college has not always been sufficiently 
developed. The learning of appointed lessons, the mem- 
orising of rules and dates, the solution of problems, and 
the observation or performance of experiments, all this is 
undoubtedly good discipline, but it is not enough. The 
scholar should be able to express himself clearly and con- 
cisely, and there are very few, indeed, who can do this 
without long and careful practice. I have talked with some 
of the leading publishers of American books, regarding the 
manuscript submitted to them, and I have spoken with 
editors of the very best magazines, and from both these 
sources, which are, doubtless, perfectly well informed, I 
received the same impression, that this country is now pro- 
lific in writers, but that the number of trained literary men 
who can write well, and make of literature a profession, is 
very small. There are many who are eager to print their 
effusions, but there are few who are willing to elaborate 
their work, re-writing, re-arranging, pruning, condensing, 
until the best form is attained. It is a mistake to 
suppose that writers who win the highest renown are com- 
monly hasty, that they dash off what they say by a stroke of 
genuis. The biography of Dickens shows what pains he 
took even to secure the right proper names; for example, 
note his choice of the title " Household Words." Pages 
of his proof sheets, which I have seen, show how carefully 



DAWN OF A UNIVERSITY 265 

he revised every paragraph. The very last proofs of " Pev- 
eril of the Peak " (owned by President White) show that 
a romance of Walter Scott received the master's final 
touches just before the printing began. Bret Harte's famous 
poem on the " Heathen Chinee " was corrected and re- 
corrected, and on the ultimate revision received, I believe, 
that satirical touch, " We are ruined by Chinese cheap 
labour." Emerson is considered by many as a sort of oracle, 
simply opening his mouth to let fall aphorisms of profound 
wisdom, but recent and authentic narratives of his life 
show that he forged his sentences like the gold-beater who 
is preparing a setting for pearls. One of his biographers 
(Mr. Cook) has taken the pains to trace the genesis of some 
of his favourite writings and well-known phrases. " The 
published essays," he says, " are often the results of many 
lectures — the most pregnant sentences and paragraphs alone 
being retained. His apples are sorted over and over again 
until only the very rarest, the most perfect, are left. It 
does not matter that those thrown away are very good — they 
are unmercifully cast aside. His essays are consequently 
very slowly elaborated, wrought out through days, and 
months, and even years of patient thought." 

You may think it very trifling for me to speak of pen- 
manship, but I cannot refrain from telling a story of one 
of the most illustrious mathematicians of the nineteenth 
century, whose great treatise lay unnoticed for nearly three 
years in the archives of the French Academy, because, as 
Legendre himself acknowledged, it was almost illegible, being 
written with very faint ink, and the characters being badly 
formed. Resurgent from the temporary grave to which its 
bad penmanship consigned it, this treatise of Abel's became 
the point of departure for profound researches, still in 
progress fifty years later, by Cayley in Cambridge and 
Sylvester in Baltimore. All this seems to me to indicate that 
training, imposed by one's self or by one's teacher, is 



266 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY, 

essential to literary success. Colleges provide such training. 
Colleges, moreover, invite us to the study of nature, the 
earth and the stars, the laws of number and of force, the 
forms and functions of animal and vegetable life, and the 
elements of matter. What Ruskin eloquently advises, the 
college teaches by appropriate methods. " Go to Nature," 
he says, " in all singleness of heart and walk with her 
laboriously and trustingly, having no other thoughts but 
how best to penetrate her meaning; and remember her in- 
struction — rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorn- 
ing nothing,* believing all things to be right and good, and 
rejoicing alway in the truth." 

In coming here, I happened to bring the writings of two 
very different men; one a typical American, James A. Gar- 
field, the other a master of English culture, Matthew 
Arnold; President Garfield, college president as he was, 
before he entered the service of the State, complains of the 
failure of our schools and colleges to fit men for life; and 
likewise Matthew Arnold, the poet, the man of letters, the 
defender of Greek culture, declaims with equal vehemence, 
against the want of modern science in our modern education, 
and berates the rule of thumb which costs us so dearly. If 
two such differing doctors agree, the evil must be real. 
To remedy this evil, teachers and trustees must recognise 
the changing conditions of modern life, its perils and its 
privileges, and adapt their work to new conditions. Let 
me call attention to one of the new conditions which require 
consideration. 

Among the chief pursuits of the Mississippi valley is the 
business of building towns. This the census shows. The 
centre of population, which was once at Baltimore, has been 
steadily moving inland on the line of the thirty-ninth parallel. 
At the latest observation, it rested a little beyond the south- 
western corner of Ohio. In the great Mississippi valley the 
preponderance of numbers is now manifest; the prepond- 



DAWN OF A UNIVERSITY 267 

erance likewise of political power; may I not say the pre- 
ponderance also of influential statesmen? May I venture 
to add of literary ability, when I remember that Howells 
was born on the borders of Lake Erie and Cable in New 
Orleans? Shall we not soon be obliged to say that great 
towns preponderate here? 

More than one-fourth of the inhabitants of the United 
States are characterised by the statisticians as urban, — that 
is, as dwelling in towns and cities. West of the Alleghenies, 
there are already one hundred and three towns having each 
above 10,000 people. This indicates that the population of 
the Mississippi valley, remarkable as that region is for its 
marvellous agricultural advantages, tends toward the central 
life of a city or town. Every one of these civic communities 
should be organised and governed in the light of modern 
science, and should employ an urban engineer as its paid 
adviser in all that pertains to the application of modern 
science to convenience, comfort and health. I will not here 
expand this suggestion, but I am sure that there is a new 
profession for which young men may be trained, and in 
which they may render just as valuable service as is given 
by the legal adviser or the superintendent of schools. Our 
civil service will not be completely reformed until municipal 
arrangements, which affect the property, the comfort, the 
health, and even the life of the citizens, are directed by the 
counsel and authority of a man of liberal education, trained 
in all that pertains to the requirements of a well ordered 
town. 

It is of great importance, I claim, in advocating the study 
of nature, to keep before the public sound views of the in- 
terdependence of theoretical and applied science. They go 
hand in hand promoting human progress. Applied science 
needs no fostering care, for capital is always ready to seize 
upon good inventions and turn them to account; witness 
the steam engine and the telegraph. On the contrary, pure 



268 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

science does need encouragement and support; and that 
support must be given by universities and colleges. It is 
not their exclusive province, I admit, but they are wanted 
to furnish such aid, generously, persistently, and without 
reference to immediate results. 

Recent circumstances have called universal attention to 
electricity, and as the progress of this science affords a good 
example of the doctrine I am endeavouring to enforce, I 
propose to dwell upon it. 

There is now in session at Paris an international com- 
mission of scientific experts. It is not a congress, nor a con- 
vention, but a select assembly of eminent physicists, delegated 
by their respective governments to discuss theories and de- 
termine methods, which may be applied in every part of the 
civilised world to the solution of electrical problems. They 
constitute a sort of international academy of physical science, 
an Ecole des Hautes Etudes in physics, such as the world had 
never seen before. The appointment of this commission is 
due to the action of a much larger body which assembled 
last year, in connection with an exhibition of electrical ap- 
paratus and appliances held in the Trocadero. This assembly 
drew up, after long consideration, a series of propositions 
to be discussed by the more select body, which has now been 
convened. The inquiries proposed are based on all that 
has hitherto been discovered and invented, and indicate the 
problems which need international conference for their com- 
plete solution. 

Cleveland need not be reminded of the uses of electricity. 
You would agree with Professor Mascart, of Paris, who 
said that the world not only demands the transmission of 
thought, speech, and light by electricity, but also the per- 
formance of mechanical work. You would not think M. 
Dumas extravagant in closing the congress with the remark, 
that " the nineteenth century will be known as the century 
of electricity, " — as the fifteenth has been called the century 



DAWN OF A UNIVERSITY 269 

1 . 

of geographical discoveries.! But it may be worth while to 

remind you that these achievements have been accomplished 
almost within the range of one long life. Prior to Franklin, 
who flew his famous kite in 1752, the relation of electricity 
and lightning was unknown; even his experiments were at 
first received with incredulity and ridicule. Galvani was 
experimenting on his frogs, as he sailed from Sinigaglia to 
Rimini in 1795. Coulomb, not far from the same time, in- 
vented the torsion balance. Volta was called to Paris in 
1802 to receive for his discovery of the voltaic pile that 
great prize which in 1881 was bestowed upon Alexander 
Graham Bell. 

Before men could cable a dispatch, or speak through a 
telephone, or read by an electric light, or travel by an electric 
motor, the two forces of abstract science and industrial skill 
had been working together through seven or eight decades 
of this century, from Volta to Edison. The torch of science 
had been handed from one genius to another. Now it was 
in Italy, now in France, now in Germany, now in Great 
Britain, now in America. At one time the light was held 
in the hands of pure science; at another, of ingenious art. 
Discoveries thus effected wrought greater changes in com- 
merce than the discovery of the passage around the Cape; 
greater modifications in domestic life than any invention since 
the days of Gutenberg and Faust. 

But I wish to bring forward the fact that in all this 
progress the educational foundations contributed that which 
was fundamental and indispensable, — though they have 
rarely received credit for their part. Volta was a professor 
in Pavia when he discovered the voltaic pile, and Ohm was 
a professor in Munich when he won " the blue ribbon of 
science," the Copley medal of London. It was in the 
University of Gottingen that Gauss and Weber pursued 
their mathematical researches; it was the Royal Institution 
of London which discovered and fostered the genius of 



270 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

Faraday ; it was in the laboratories of Scotland and Germany 
that Kelvin and Helmholtz won renown; it was from 
the lyceum at Lyons that Ampere was called to the Poly- 
technic School of Paris; it was in the Albany Academy that 
Joseph Henry began his discoveries. Without their hidden 
labours we should not have seen the conspicuous triumphs 
of modern electrical art. "Without the encouragement of 
just such men as these, in future, the electrical arts will 
stand where they are, — and the results, which seem to be so 
near at hand, will recede like the waters which surrounded 
Tantalus. 

For the last fifty years pure mathematics has been in 
partnership with experimental observation. Indeed, it was 
not until men, trained by the exact methods of mathematical 
science, discussed the fundamental theories that the inventor's 
work began. Neither method could have led to such practical 
results without the other's aid. But popular applause and 
pecuniary gains have rarely been given to the elaborators of 
a theory. It is therefore the duty of a university to cherish 
and encourage such men, — all the more earnestly because the 
part of a theorist in the promotion of an art is likely to be 
abstract and hidden, little talked about and inadequately 
rewarded. 

It is a slight but just recognition of such services that 
in technical terminology, employed in every land by the 
practical electricians, the names of these quiet workers in 
the laboratory and the den are to be constantly repeated, — 
and the Ohm, the Volt, the Ampere, the Coulomb, and 
the Farad will forever echo in every tongue the names of 
those physicists who have made possible by their researches 
the modern arts of electricity. 

The munificence of Americans is one of the admirable 
forces now moulding human society. It surprises the peo- 
ple of other lands; it surprises ourselves. Every new gift 
begets another. When the genealogy of education comes to 



DAWN OF A UNIVERSITY 271 

be written, we shall read that old England begat New 
England, and Cambridge begat New Haven, old Connecticut 
begat new Connecticut, Yale begat the college at Hud- 
son, and the college at Hudson begat the Western Re- 
serve University at Cleveland, with its allied founda- 
tions. 

I now turn to the local aspects of the problem. The 
transfer of a well-planted institution to another site more 
than twenty miles distant, the establishment of a great school 
of science in close proximity, the proposed removal of a 
professional school to the same neighbourhood, and the 
adoption of the name " University," the loftiest term in all 
the vocabulary of education, clearly indicate a tendency to 
do more than has yet been done for the higher education in 
this region. The movers in these enterprises must have more 
than human skill if they can carry all these projects forward 
without friction. I have not heard of any such interruptions 
in New Connecticut as occurred in Old Connecticut, when 
the infant collegiate school, which has become the university 
of Yale College, was removed to New Haven from the 
town of Saybrook. The story goes that the people along 
the shore line were so indignant at the change of base that they 
stopped the carts which were transporting the books, and 
in the melee the library was scattered. Order was restored 
by an appeal to the Governor. There is no such danger 
here. 

New life begins with pain. New inventions and dis- 
coveries disturb existing usages, and for the day seem to 
bring harm rather than good. Progress is not favourable 
to repose, and repose is the scholar's paradise. No one will 
wonder if the changes now going forward, which look so 
hopeful from the outside, are attended with some regret 
within the circle. Of any such details I am ignorant ; I speak 
only of the ordinary feelings of human nature. At the same 



272 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

time, I am so sure that the sun is rising upon Cleveland that 
I welcome the clouds which herald the dawn. They mark 
the movement of the morning's chariot. But not here alone. 
The most casual observer of educational progress in this 
country must perceive that the Nation is entering upon what 
might be termed the university epoch. Our common school 
system is established, we have an abundance of colleges — 
now comes the day for a few great, comprehensive, well- 
ordered, and well-endowed universities. It is easy to see 
that not only Cambridge and New Haven, but Ithaca, and 
Ann Arbor, and Baltimore, are advancing upon the uni- 
versity plane. But what is a university? Let me answer in 
the words of one already quoted. 

Matthew Arnold says : the university " ought to pro- 
vide facilities, after the general education is finished, for 
the young man to go on in the line where his special aptitudes 
lead him, be it that of languages and literature, of math- 
ematics, of the natural sciences, of the application of these 
sciences, or any other line, and follow the studies of this 
line systematically, under first-rate teaching." 

Again, " The idea of a university is, as I have already 
said, that of an institution not only offering to young men 
facilities for graduating in that line of study to which their 
aptitudes direct them, but offering to them also facilities 
for following that line of study systematically under first- 
rate instruction. This second function is of incalculable 
importance, of far greater importance even than the first. 
It is impossible to overvalue the importance to a young man 
of being brought in contact with a first-rate teacher of his 
matter of study, and of getting from him a clear notion of 
what the systematic study of it means." 

To promote this idea two things are necessary, concen- 
tration and co-operation. Funds, plans, and teachers must 
be united so that without rivalry or needless repetition all 
the forces of advanced education in a given community may 



DAWN OF A UNIVERSITY 273 

be combined to advance the projects in view. It is not 
necessary for any member of the group to lose its individ- 
uality. The college and the school of science need not give 
up their dignity and independence because they are affiliated 
in a university. There must be a plan akin to that worked 
out in political life, a balance of powers, so that while local 
rights are preserved, the general interests are promoted. The 
problem is not easy, but its solution suggests far fewer 
difficulties than those which beset our national government. 
May not the parallel be carried further? As this nation 
began with local institutions, then proceeded to confederated 
action, and finally reached the idea of a federal republic, in 
which the rights of States were protected and the wider ad- 
vantages of a union were secured; so may it be in our edu- 
cational progress. There will be many colleges grouped 
under the aegis of a true university. 

But a university is a good deal more than a federation 
of colleges. It is the exponent of this idea, that beyond the 
work of any college is the work of all the colleges of the 
group. Instruction far beyond the curriculum of a college 
may be given by the united forces of the university ; libraries 
and collections, far more extensive than a college needs, 
are needed for the university; examinations and degrees, 
more dignified and stimulating than a college can offer, may 
be sought in the broader arena of university competition. I 
only hint at a few distinctions which cannot fully be set 
forth in a popular discourse. Fortunate will it be for 
Cleveland, if the idea is unfolded in many speeches and 
reports, in many conferences and debates, in sunshine and 
in showers, till at last the bud ripens and the fruit appears. 

In thinking of the future, which may be at hand, nearer 
perhaps than most of us are aware, when Cleveland will be 
the seat of a university, in fact as well as in name, when 
liberal provision will be made for the prosecution of all 
branches of knowledge, I have been led to consider the 



274 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

foundations of other high schools, not only at home, but 
abroad; to recall the munificence which at one time made 
Florence the seat of culture; at another, made Edin- 
burgh resemble in its opportunities, as well as in its 
aspects, the ancient seat of Grecian literature; which again 
made Leyden bloom after the desolations of a long siege; 
Berlin to rise from its depression after the French invasion; 
Strassburg to come forward with new life after its bombard- 
ment; and, permit me to add, made Baltimore, at the close 
of our war and of our reconstruction period, the centre of 
influences in science and art, so varied and so good as to 
be an example to other cities. Each new gift, as it comes to 
maturity, becomes the parent of some noble offspring. 

(But I bring before you another example, the University 
of Gottingen, because the lessons of its history are pecu- 
liarly instructive to Americans, and especially interesting 
if we trace its influence upon the civilisation of our country. 

It is worth while for the citizens of Cleveland, engaged 
in founding a university, to ask what has given Gottingen 
its power. 

Is it age ? No ; it is younger than Yale, and Harvard, and 
William and Mary. It is an infant in years when com- 
pared with Bologna and Prague. The date of its founda- 
tion is 1737. 

Has it the attractions of a fine city — a court and its sur- 
roundings? No; it was a "dull little place," said Haller, 
when he went to it. Even now it has but 20,000 inhabi- 
tants. It can not be compared with Munich, Berlin, or 
Vienna. Heine, in his " Pictures of Travel," begins with 
a fearful description of the city. " It pleases most," he says, 
" when looked at backwards." 

Has it a choice natural situation ? No ; it is on a broad 
plain, remote from the sea, without near high hills; it does 
not compare in position with Heidelberg or Geneva, with 
New Haven or West Point. 



DAWN OF A UNIVERSITY 275 

Has it splendid architecture? No; in early times, only 
the plainest buildings. The houses of Heeren and Heyne 
were united under one roof for the needed class-rooms. 
Even now there are only the simple academic requisites. 
An American studying in Gottingen in 1825 has recorded 
the fact that he could discover nothing to remind him of 
a university — except the students. 

Has it large landed estates or other hereditary endow- 
ments? No; it has depended on the appropriations of the 
state and the fees of the students. 

Was it supported by the Presbyterians, or the Episco- 
palians, or the Methodists, or the Baptists, and did it care 
to choose its professors from the dominant denomination? 
No; its religious teachings were on the broad basis of 
evangelical theology. 

Did its crew ever beat the students of Bonn in a boat- 
race, or challenge the university of Rostock to a game of 
ball? Not that I ever heard of. 

Did it have a campus for athletic sports? No; but there 
were attractive excursions around the village and a fine 
promenade upon the old municipal wall, where professors 
and students took their daily " constitutionals." 

What, then, gave to Gottingen its power? I answer, two 
things — wise methods and great men. 

Munchhausen, the elector's minister, was the organiser 
of the work, and his plans to place the infant institution 
upon a foundation superior to any in Germany, are at 
this day models of instruction to Cleveland and to Balti- 
more. His wise methods secured great teachers; great 
teachers drew able scholars; those able scholars carried to 
distant lands the lessons they had learned. Think what 
Americans were drawn there — Everett, Bancroft, Motley, 
Gould, Child, Lane, Goodwin, Gildersleeve, Remsen, and 
many more. Think what a library has been formed there 
— 500,000 volumes and 5,000 manuscripts. Think what 



276 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

illustrious teachers have there taught — Haller and Blumen- 
bach, princes of anatomy; Michaelis and Ewald, chiefs of 
Biblical and Oriental learning; Heyne and Otfried M tiller 
and Carl F. Hermann in classical lore; the Grimms in 
Teutonic philology; Benfey in Sanskrit; Heeren in history; 
Weber and Gauss, duces et principes in mathematics and 
physics; Wohler, whose death is just announced, in chem- 
istry. Think how these men have affected our own country 
by their writings. The religious mind, next to the study 
of the gospels, turns to the history of the Jewish church. 
Whose history is popular? Stanley's; and from whom did 
his inspiration come? From Ewald of Gottingen. You 
may find his reference to his teacher in the second volume 
of his Jewish history. Ewald, when Stanley first met him, 
had in his hand a small Greek testament. " In this little 
book," he said, " is contained all the wisdom of the world." 
" To listen to Ewald," he says, " after ordinary teachers 
was like passing from the dust and turmoil of the street into 
the depth and grandeur of an ancient cathedral." Who 
among the fathers was the most patient and systematic and 
thorough student of the history of the United States? Ban- 
croft. Who was his teacher? Heeren, of Gottingen. 
Whence came the modern treatise on waves which is at 
the basis of investigations in physics? From Weber, of 
Gottingen, when he was still a student, only twenty-one 
years old. 

It is thus that a university is developed : First, there must 
be wise plans; second, sufficient funds; third, powerful 
teachers; then will come, fourth, many students; fifth, great 
collections; sixth, world-wide influence and renown. 

Such an opportunity now presents itself to the citizens of 
this city and this region. I do not know what measure of 
wisdom, patience, and conciliation may be possessed by those 
who are leaders in these new movements. Personally they 
are almost all strangers to me — but their works are known 



DAWN OF A UNIVERSITY 277 

and read of all men. Here are sound traditions, intelligent 
people, well-organized schools, munificent gifts, high ideals; 
the auspicious beginnings of a college, a school of science, 
and a school of medicine are visible already. When will 
come the university with its great library, laboratories and 
museums, its college of law and of theology, its college for 
women, its observatory, and its institute for physical research, 
its schools of the fine arts and of music, its hospital, and its 
gymnasium? I cannot tell; but you, the wise, the strong, 
the rich and the liberal citizens of Cleveland can make the 
answer what you will. 

Remembering that the buildings opened to-day are the 
buildings of Adelbert College, and that Adelbert College 
is but one member of the University that will bear the name 
of Western Reserve, strive to secure affiliations among 
kindred institutions which have been or may be founded in 
this region, for in union there is strength. 

" 'Tis always Morning somewhere in the world," 

and I congratulate you that to-day we behold the Dawn of 
a University in Cleveland. 

" So having gathered violets, reap the corn, 

And having reaped and garnered bring the plough, 
And draw new furrows 'neath the healthy morn 
And plant the great hereafter in the now." 



HAND-CRAFT AND REDE-CRAFT 



This paper, first published in the Century Magazine 
for October, 1886, was also printed for general distribu- 
tion elsewhere. It was prepared for delivery at the an- 
niversary of the Maryland Institute of Baltimore. 



XVI 

HAND-CRAFT AND REDE-CRAFT — A PLEA FOR THE 
FIRST NAMED 

Calls for more handicraft have been heard of late in many 
portions of this land, — sometimes a call for higher skill in the 
use of fingers and arms, — and sometimes a call for the wider 
spread of such skill among the people at large. Just now we 
wish to speak of some of the general aspects of a movement 
which is very complex as well as general, and at the same time 
is full of promise and hope. 

We begin by using the word handicraft, for that is the 
form to which we are wonted in speech and in print ; but we 
rather like the old form, " hand-craft," which was used by 
our sires so long ago as Anglo-Saxon days. Neither form is 
in vogue, as we know very well, for people choose nowadays 
such Latin words as technical ability, industrial pursuits, 
manual labour, dexterity, professional artisanship, manufac- 
ture, technological occupation, polytechnic education, and 
decorative art, not one of which is half so good as the plain, 
old, strong term, handicraft or hand-craft. We shall do 
what we can to bring back this old friend. 

One reason why we like this word is that it includes so 
much, and yet is so clear that everybody knows what it 
means, — the power of the hand to hold, shape, match, carve, 
paint, bake, plough, or weave. Another reason why we like 
to say hand-craft is because of the easy contrast it suggests 
with another old word, which is likewise out of vogue, rede- 
craft, the power to read, to reason, and to think, — or as it is 
said in the book of common prayer, " to read, mark, learn, 
and inwardly digest." By rede-craft we find out what other 
men have written down; we get our book-learning; we are 

281 



282 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

made heirs to thoughts that breathe and words that burn; 
we enter into the acts, the arts, the loves, the lore, the lives 
of the witty, the cunning, and the worthy of all ages and all 
places. 

Rede-craft is not the foe, but the friend of hand-craft. 
They are brothers, partners, consorts, who should work to- 
gether as right hand and left hand, as science and art, as 
theory and practice. Rede-craft may call for books, and 
hand-craft for tools, but it is by the help of both books and 
tools that mankind moves on. Their union is as sacred as 
the marriage tie; no divorce can be allowed. The pleasure 
and the profit of modern life depend upon the endurance of 
their joint action. 

Indeed, we should not err wide of the mark by saying that 
a book is a tool, for it is the instrument we make use of in 
certain cases when we wish to find out what other men have 
thought and done. There is a sense in which it is also true 
that a tool is a book, the record of past ages of talent engaged 
in toil. Take a plough, for example. Compare the form in 
use to-day on a first-rate farm with that which is pictured 
on ancient stones long hid in Egypt, ages old. See how the 
plough idea has grown; and bear in mind that its graceful 
curves, its fitness for a special soil or for a special crop, its 
labour-saving shape, came not by chance, but by thought. It 
embodies the experience of many generations of ploughmen. 

Look upon a Collins axe, lay it by the side of such a toma- 
hawk as was used by Uncas or Miantonomoh, or with a 
hatchet of the age of bronze, and think how many minds 
have worked upon the head and the helve; how much skill 
has been spent in getting the metal, in making it hard, in 
shaping the edge, in fixing the weight, in forming the handle. 
Take a cambric needle and compare it with the fish bone or 
the thorn with which savages sewed their hides. Or from 
simple turn to complex tools — the steam-engine, the sewing- 
machine, the dynamo, the telegraph, the ocean steamer; all 



HAND-CRAFT AND REDE-CRAFT 283 

are full of ideas. All are the offspring of hand-craft and 
rede-craft, of skill and thought, of practice put on record, 
of science and art. The welfare of our land, of our race, 
rests on this union. We can almost take the measure of 
a man's brain if we can find out what he sees and what he 
does; we can judge of a country or of a city if we know 
what it makes. 

We need not ask which is the better, hand-craft or rede- 
craft. Certainly, " the eye cannot say to the hand, I have 
no need of thee"; at times, indeed, when the eye is blind, 
the hand takes its place, and the fingers learn to read, run- 
ning over the printed page to find out what is there as 
quickly as the eye. To what realms was Laura Bridgman, 
sightless and speechless, led by the culture of her touch! 
Helen Keller's story is more remarkable. 

It is wrong that so many people, some whose minds are 
full of ideas and some whose purses are full of gold (not to 
speak of those who have neither), are prone to look down 
upon hand-craft. They think only of the tasks of a slave, 
a drudge, or a char-boy. They have never tasted the pleasure 
of making, the delight there is in guiding the fingers by the 
conscious and planning will. They like to hear, see, own, 
or eat what others have made, but they know nothing of the 
pleasure of production. Their minds may be bright, but 
their fingers are lazy. Many such persons work too long 
and too late with their eyes, poring over the story of what 
others have done, and keeping their brains alert with the 
tales of other people's skill ; yet they never think of finding 
another sort of rest or relief in the practice of hand-craft. 
If you doubt this, put two notices in the paper, one asking for 
a workman and the other for a clerk, and you will see on 
the morrow which calling is popular. So it comes to pass 
that boys become men without being trained to any kind of 
skill; they wish, therefore, to be buyers and sellers, traders 
and dealers. The market, which is poorly supplied with 



284 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

those who are trained in the higher walks of hand-craft, is 
doubtless overstocked with clerks, bookkeepers, salesmen, 
and small shopkeepers. Some young men who are poor in 
pocket and rich enough in talent go to college, allowing 
their mothers and their sisters to toil for their support, and 
many more accept the gifts of unknown helpers, and not 
because they prefer to do so, but because they have never 
learned how to produce with their own hands anything which 
the world is willing to pay for. Ask such a youth, " What 
can you do for your own support?" alas, how often will 
" Nothing " be the answer! 

To some extent machinery works against hand-craft. In 
many factories the hand has but little to do, and that little is 
always the same, so that labour becomes tiresome, and the 
workman is dull. It is a marvel how machinery, which em- 
bodies the inventor's mind, takes the place of mind in the 
workman; machinery can cut statues, weave tapestry, grind 
out music, make long calculations in arithmetic, solve simple 
problems in logic, — alas, the machine has been brought into 
politics ! Of course a land cannot thrive without machinery. 
How could the ore be brought to the surface and made cur- 
rent as coin without machinery; how could the prairies be 
tilled as they are without reapers and mowers; how could 
the corn, the beef, and the sugar be carried from our rich 
valleys and plains to the hungry of other lands; how could 
the products of their looms and foundries be brought back to 
us without the aid of those seven-league-booted giants, the 
locomotive and the marine engine? Nevertheless, he who 
lives by the machine alone leads but half a life, while he who 
uses his hand to contrive and adorn drives dulness from his 
path. It is hand-craft, the power to shape, to beautify, and 
to create, which gives pleasure and dignity to labour. A true 
artist and a true artisan are governed by one spirit; their 
brains are the masters of their hands. 

In other climes and in other times, hand-craft had more 



HAND-CRAFT AND REDE-CRAFT 285 

honour than it has with us. The touch of Phidias was his 
own, and so inimitable that not long ago an American, scan- 
ning with his practised eye the galleries of the Louvre, dis- 
covered a fragment of the work of Phidias long separated 
from the other fragments by that sculptor which Lord Elgin 
had sent to London. The artist's stroke could not be mis- 
taken, — it was his own, as truly as our sign-manuals, our 
autographs. Ruskin, in a lecture upon the relation of art to 
morals, speaks of a note which Diirer made on some draw- 
ings sent him by Raphael. It was this : " These figures 
Raphael drew and sent to Albert Diirer in Niirnberg, — to 
show him his hand." Ruskin well compares this phrase with 
other stories of the hand-craft of artists, — Apelles and 
Protogenes showing their skill by drawing a line; Giotto in 
striking a circle. There is a custom, if not a law, in the 
royal households of Prussia that every boy shall learn a trade. 
The emperor is said to be a glazier, and the crown prince a 
printer; not long ago, as a birthday gift, his Majesty received 
an engraving by one prince and a book bound by another, 
both sons of the heir-apparent. In one of the most famous 
shrines of education in Paris, two paintings adorn the chapel 
walls, not of saints or martyrs, not of apostles or prophets, — 
perhaps I should say an apostle and a saint, Labor and 
Humilitas; Industry the apostle of happiness, and Modesty 
the divine grace. Is it not worthy of note that Isaiah, tell- 
ing of golden days to come, when the voice of weeping shall 
be no more heard in the land, nor the voice of crying, when 
the child shall die an hundred years old, and men shall eat 
of the fruit of the vineyards they have planted, adds this 
promise as the greatest of all hopes, that the elect of the 
Lord shall long enjoy the work of their hands? 

If now we really value hand-craft, we shall find many 
ways of giving it honour ; we can buy that which shows it, or 
if we are too poor to buy, we can help on with our looks and 
words those who bring taste and skill into the works of their 



286 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

hand. If your means are so small that you can only buy 
what you need for your daily wants, you cannot have much 
choice; but hardly any who reads these pages is so restricted 
as that: almost, if not quite, everyone buys something every 
year for his pleasure, — a curtain, a rug, a wall-paper, a chair, 
or a table, not truly needed, a vase, a clock, a mantle orna- 
ment, a piece of jewellery, a portrait, an etching. Now, in 
making such a purchase to please the eye, to make the cham- 
ber, the parlour, or the office more attractive, choose always 
that which shows good handiwork. Such a choice will last. 
You will not tire of it as you will of commonplace forms and 
patterns, and your children after you will value it as much 
as you do. 

Let us not forget, however, that hand-craft gives us many 
things which do not appeal to our sense of beauty, but which 
are nevertheless of priceless value, — a Jacquard loom, a Cor- 
liss engine, a Hoe printing-press, a Winchester rifle, an Edi- 
son dynamo, a Bell telephone. Ruskin may scout the work 
of machinery, and up to a certain point in his enthusiasm 
for hand-craft, may carry us with him. Let us say without 
a question that works of art — the " Gates of Paradise," by 
Ghiberti, a shield by Cellini, a statue by Michael Angelo, a 
portrait by Titian — are better than any reproductions or imi- 
tations, electrotypes by Barbedienne, plaster casts by Eichler, 
or chromos by Prang. But even Ruskin cannot suppress 
the fact that machinery brings to every cottage of our day 
comforts and adornments which in the days of Queen Bess, 
or even of Queen Anne, were not known outside of the 
palace, — and perhaps not there ; and let us be mindful that it 
is modern hand-craft which has made the machines of such 
wonderful productivity, weaving tissues more delicate than 
Penelope ever embroidered, and cutting the hardest metals 
with a precision unknown to Vulcan's forge. Machinery is 
a triumph of hand-craft as truly as sculpture or architecture. 
The fingers which have shaped the Aurania or the Brooklyn 



HAND-CRAFT AND REDE-CRAFT 287 

suspension bridge are as full of art as those which have cut 
an obelisk from granite or moulded the uplifted torch of 
Liberty. Rowland's dividing engine, which with its unerr- 
ing diamond plough traces forty thousand furrows upon an 
inch of the concave grating, silently and ceaselessly at work 
from day to day, that men may see more than they ever have 
yet seen of the glories of the sun — a machine like this has 
beauty of its own; not that of the human form nor that of 
a running brook, but the beauty of perfect adaptation to a pur- 
pose, secured by consummate hand-craft. The fingers which 
can make a mountain stream turn myriads of spindles, or 
transform rag heaps into perfumed paper, or evoke thou- 
sands of handy objects from brass and iron, are fingers which 
the nineteenth century has evolved. The hand-craft which 
has made useful things cheap is already making cheap things 
beautiful. See how rapidly, for example, pottery in this 
country has become a fine art. Let us hope that Americans 
will learn from the Japanese how to form and finish, before 
the Japanese learn from us how to slight and sham. 

There is another duty to be enforced, which is this. All 
who have to deal with the young, whether parents or teachers, 
should see to it that children acquire hand-craft while they 
are getting rede-craft. Mothers begin right in the nursery, 
teaching little fingers to play before the tongue can lisp a 
sentence. Alas, this natural training has too often been 
stopped at school. Books have claimed the right of way; 
rede-craft has taken the place of honour; hand-craft has been 
kept in the rear. But now the ghost of Pestalozzi has been 
raised; the spirit of Froebel is walking abroad in the land; 
changes are coming in schools of every grade. The changes 
began at the top of our educational system and are fast work- 
ing down to the bottom. What mean the new buildings 
which have appeared of late years in all our thriving colleges ? 
They are libraries and laboratories, — the temples of rede- 
craft, and of hand-craft ; they tell us that in universities, the 



288 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

highest of all schools, work-rooms, labour-places, laboratories, 
are appreciated as book-rooms, reading-rooms, libraries; 
they show that a liberal education means skill in getting and 
in using knowledge; that wisdom comes from searching 
books and searching nature ; that in the finest human natures 
the brain and the hand are in close league. So too in the 
lowest schools as far as possible from the university, the 
kindergarten methods have won their place, and the blocks, 
straws, and bands, the chalk, clay, and scissors, are in use 
to make young fingers deft. 

Intermediate schools have not yet done so well. There 
has even been danger that one of the most needful forms of 
hand-craft would become a lost art, even good handwriting, 
and schools have been known to send out boys skilled in 
algebra and in a knowledge of the aorist who could not write 
a page of English so that other people could read it without 
effort. The art of drawing is another kind of hand-craft 
which has been quite too much neglected in ordinary schools. 
It ought to be laid down as a rule of the road to knowledge 
that everybody must learn to draw as well as to write. The 
pencil is a simpler tool than the pen. The child draws pic- 
tures on his slate before he learns the pot-hooks of his copy- 
book ; savages begin their language with gestures and pictures ; 
but we wiseacres of the schoolboards let our youngsters drop 
their slate pencils and their Fabers when we make them 
practice with their Gillotts and their Esterbrooks. We ought 
to say, in every school and in every house, the child must 
learn to draw as well as to read and write. It is the begin- 
ning of hand-craft, the hand-craft which underlies a host of 
modern callings. A new French book has lately attracted 
much attention, " The Life of a Wise Man by an Igno- 
ramus." It is the story of the great Pasteur, whose dis- 
coveries in respect to germ life have made him world-famous. 
If you turn to this book to find out the key to such success, 
you will see the same old story, — the child is father of the 



HAND-CRAFT AND REDE-CRAFT 289 

man. This great physiologist, whose eye is keen and whose 
hand is so artful, is the boy grown up, whose pictures were 
so good when he was thirteen years old that the villagers 
thought him an artist of rank. 

Sewing, as well as drawing and writing, has been neglected 
in our ordinary schools. Girls should certainly learn the 
second lessons of hand-craft with the needle. Boys may well 
do so ; but girls must. The wise governor of a New England 
State did not hesitate, a short time since, to say upon a com- 
mencement platform how much he had often valued the use 
of the needle, which was taught him in his infant school. 
How many a traveller can tell a like tale? It is wise that 
our schools are going back to old-fashioned ways, and saying 
that girls must learn to sew. 

Boys should practise their hands upon the knife. John 
Bull used to laugh at Brother Jonathan for whittling, 
and Punch always drew the Yankee with a blade in his 
fingers; but they found out long ago over the waters that 
whittling in this land led to something, — a Boston " notion," 
a wooden clock, a yacht America, a labour-saving machine, a 
cargo of wooden ware, a shop full of knick-knacks, an age of 
inventions. Boys need not be kept back to the hand-craft 
of the knife. For indoors there are the type-case and the 
printing-press, the paint-box, the tool-box, the lathe; and for 
outdoors, the trowel, the spade, the grafting-knife. It mat- 
ters not how many of the minor arts the youth acquires; the 
more the merrier. Let each one gain the most he can in 
all such ways, for arts like these bring no harm in their 
train; quite otherwise, they lure good fortune to their 
company. 

Play, as well as work, may bring out hand-craft. The 
gun, the bat, the rein, the rod, the oar, all manly sports are 
good training for the hand. Walking insures fresh air, but 
it does not train the body or mind like games and sports 
which are played out-of-doors. A man of great fame as an 



290 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

explorer and as a student of nature (he who discovered in 
the West bones of horses with two, three, and four toes, and 
found the remains of birds with teeth) has said that his suc- 
cess was largely due to the sports of his youth. His boyish 
love of fishing gave him his manly skill in exploration. 

I speak as if hand-craft was to be learned by sport. So it 
may. It may also be learned by labour. Day by day, for 
weeks, the writer has been watching from his study window 
a stately inn rise from the cellar just across the road. A 
bricklayer has been there employed whose touch is like the 
stroke of an artist. He handled each brick as if it were 
porcelain, balanced it carefully in his hand, measured with 
his eye just the amount of mortar which it needed, and 
dropped the block into its bed without straining its edge, 
without varying from the plumb-line, by a stroke of hand- 
craft as true as the sculptor's. Toil gave him skill. 

The last point which we make is this: Instruction in 
hand-craft must be more varied and more widespread. This 
is no new thought. Forty years ago schools of applied 
science were added to Harvard and Yale colleges; twenty 
years ago Congress gave land-scrip to aid in founding at 
least one such school in every State; men of wealth have 
given large sums for such ends. Now the people at large 
are waking up. They see their needs; they have the money 
to supply their wants. Have they the will? Know they the 
way? 

Far and near the cry is heard for a different training from 
that now given in the public schools. Nobody seems to 
know just what is best; but almost every large town has its 
experiment, and many smaller places have theirs. The State 
of Massachusetts has passed a law favouring the new move- 
ment. A society of benevolent women has been formed in 
New York to collect the experience of many places, and 
make it generally known. The trustees of the Slater Fund 
for the training of freedmen have made it a first principle 



HAND-CRAFT AND REDE-CRAFT 291 

in their work that every school which is aided by that fund 
shall give manual training. The town of Toledo, in Ohio, 
opened some time ago a school of practice for boys which has 
done so much good that another has lately been opened for 
girls. St. Louis is doing famously. Philadelphia has 
several experiments in progress. Baltimore has made a start. 
In New York there are many noteworthy movements — half 
a dozen of them, at least, full of life and hope. Boston was 
never behindhand in the work of promoting knowledge, and 
in the new education is very alert, the liberality and the 
sagacity of one beneficent lady deserving praise of high de- 
gree. These are but signs of the times, examples to which 
our attention has been called, types of efforts, multiform and 
numerous, in every part of the United States. 

But it must be said that the wise differ very much as to 
what might, should, and can be done. Even the words which 
express the wants are vague. Something may be done by an 
attempt, even though it be rude, to put in classes the various 
movements which tend toward the advancement of hand- 
craft. Let us make an attempt, and present the following 
schedule for the promotion of hand-craft; 

There are four preliminary needs. 

(a) Kindergarten work should be taught in the nurseries 
and infant schools of rich and poor. 

(b) Every girl should learn to sew, and every boy should 
learn to use domestic tools, the carpenter's or the gardener's, 
or both. 

(c) Well-planned exercises fitted to strengthen the arms, 
fingers, wrists, lungs, etc., should be devised, and where pos- 
sible, driving, riding, swimming, rowing, playing ball, and 
other out-of-door sports should be encouraged. 

(d) Drawing should be taught as early as writing, and 
as long as reading, to all, and everywhere. 

Subsequent possibilities are these: 

(a) In elementary schools lessons may be given in the 



292 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

minor decorative arts, — such as those of the Leland methods, 
for example. 

(b) The use of such common tools as belong to the black- 
smith's forge and the carpenter's bench may be taught at 
slight cost, as a regular class exercise, in secondary schools for 
boys, whatever be the future vocation of the pupils. 

(c) In towns, boys who begin to earn a living when they 
enter their teens may be taught in every school to practise 
brick-laying, plastering, plumbing, gasfitting, carpentry, etc., 
as is done and well done in the Auchmuty schools in New 
York. Trade schools they are called ; " schools of practice 
for workmen " would be a clearer name. 

(d) In high schools, technical schools, and colleges, youth 
may learn to work with extreme precision in wood and metal, 
as they are taught in the College of the City of New York, in 
Cornell University, and in many other places. 

(e) Youth who will take time to fit themselves to be fore- 
men and leaders in machine shops and factories may be 
trained in theoretical and practical mechanics, as at Worces- 
ter, Hoboken, Boston, and elsewhere; but the youth who 
would win in these hard paths must have talent at command 
as well as time to spare. These are schools for foremen, or 
(if we may use a foreign word like kindergarten) they are 
Meisterschaft schools, schools for training masters. 

(/) Youth who wish to enter the highest department of 
engineering must follow long courses in mathematics and 
physics, and must learn to apply their knowledge; if they 
wish to enter upon other branches of advanced science they 
must work in the scientific laboratories now admirably 
equipped in every part of the country. These are technical 
colleges for engineers, for chemists, for explorers, for 
naturalists, etc. 

(g) Art instruction must be provided as well as scien- 
tific, elementary, constructive, decorative, and professional 
education. 



HAND-CRAFT AND REDE-CRAFT 293 

At every stage, the language of the pencil and of the pen 
must be employed; rede-craft must be practised with hand- 
craft ; and there must be no thought of immediate profit from 
that which is done in the early and rudimentary stages of 
the training. 



DE JUVENTUTE: AN ADDRESS ON 
THE PREPARATORY SCHOOL 

Delivered at the Opening of the New Halls 
of Berkeley School, New York 



When the new halls of the Berkeley School in New 
York were opened in 1891, the following address on 
The Preparatory School was delivered before an as- 
sembly of the parents and teachers. 



XVII 

DE JUVENTUTE. 

I wish that with an invitation to deliver an address there 
always came a subject to be discussed. The principal of this 
school, with his knowledge of the art of composition, was well 
aware that a good theme, if it did not ensure a good ending 
would make at least a good beginning, and so he has asked me 
to speak this evening of Preparatory Schools for Boys, — a 
theme old as the Egyptians and as dry ; new as the Berkeleyans 
and as inspiring. My discourse will be divided, like all 
Gaul, " into three parts." First I shall speak of Boys, then 
of Boys' Schools, and then of Preparatory Boys' Schools. 
My whole is De Juventute. 

With Boys I begin. I am not sure that people are agreed 
upon the limits of boyhood. Shakespeare divides life into 
seven ages, of which the second is " the whining schoolboy, 
with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like 
snail unwillingly to school," and other writers regard with a 
superstitious reverence the multiples of seven, as climacterics 
leading up to " the grand climacteric " of nine times seven ; 
but I prefer to count the first twenty or twenty-one years as 
those of boyhood; then comes early manhood — another 
twenty years; the third score is that of middle age and ma- 
turity, and the fourth, of seniority. It is only centenarians 
who can truly be called old in these days of Gladstone, Man- 
ning, Ruskin, Tennyson, Bismarck, Moltke, and Kaiser 
Wilhelm; octogenarians and nonagenarians are only in ad- 
vancing years. At Commencements, grey-haired men who 
have grandsons in college allude to their classmates as " the 
boys," and appear to think that calling a man young makes 
him so. But the boys I am to speak of have not been to 

297 



298 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

college; they are under their majority, and most of them less 
than eighteen years of age. I refer to the boys of Berkeley, 
of Exeter, of Andover, of St. Paul's, of Norwich, of 
Lawrenceville, and of hosts of other schools. I do not refer 
to the ghosts of boys, like one that went the rounds with 
Doctor Holmes when he returned, after fifty years or so, to 
the scenes of his youth and the academy of Andover. " The 
ghost of a boy was at my side," he says, " as I wandered 
among the places he knew so well." The ghost went with 
him even to the railroad station. " Give me two tickets to 
Boston," said the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table; but the 
little ghost replied, " When you leave this place you leave me 
behind you." " One ticket, then, to Boston " (said the tale- 
teller), " and good-by, little ghost." 

But in reality do men ever say good-by to " the little 
ghost " ? Is he not with us night and day, summer and 
winter, all our lives through, and are we sure that even 
death will part us from him? Ask the older men of your 
acquaintance and see if the ghost of a boy is not always near 
by. Ask even Doctor Holmes — long may we sip with him 
" over the tea-cups " — if the ghost of a boy whom he left at 
the Andover station did not fly through the air and meet 
him when he reached his house on Beacon Street. Ask him 
if the little ghost has never appeared in Cambridge or in Berk- 
shire — yes, ask him if the ghost is not always with him, 
sometimes a recording angel, sometimes a prophet of 
immortality. 

Is it not worth while for us older people to tell the boys 
that the little ghost will always keep them company — that as 
they grow older he will remind them perpetually of the past ; 
every peccadillo will be remembered, and all healthy, honest 
deeds will be treasured in the cells of memory "to be used 
as directed " ? 

During a short time past there have been some very curious 
studies respecting the natural history of boys. Mr. Howells, 



DE JUVENTUTE 299 

the novelist, has written a book that he calls " A Boy's 
Town," and in its pages he delineates, with the realistic touch 
of a master, the thoughts of a boy between his third and his 
eleventh year, who grew up in a country town on the Miami 
River. Literature is full of autobiographies, but here we 
have something quite unusual, something quite fresh in the 
literature of childhood. It is a picture drawn with ac- 
curacy by a writer who is still young, of the environment in 
which he was brought up. Here we may learn what an 
American boy surmised, discovered, and believed in respect 
to the world in which he was placed. 

By a curious coincidence, whether conscious or uncon- 
scious I cannot say, a celebrated French writer, whose nom 
de plume is Pierre Loti, has drawn a companion-picture to 
that of Howells. In these two books we may compare the 
Hugenot and the American. The Frenchman, with a lively 
imagination and a love of adventure, was subjected to the de- 
pressing influences of a French country town. On the 
prairie all was freedom; in the province all was restraint. 
But we see how both natures rose above their belongings, 
how the self-determining power of the will made them both 
keen observers, graceful narrators, distinguished novelists. 

One of the most remarkable studies of the inherent ten- 
dency of boys to organise society may be found in a paper, 
entitled " Rudimentary Society among Boys," that was 
written a short time ago by Mr. J. Hemsley Johnson, a 
connection of Reverdy Johnson, the Maryland statesman. 
In this paper we have the story of the life among the Mc- 
Donogh schoolboys, in their country home a few miles from 
Baltimore. Several hundreds of acres, with predominant 
woodlands, belonged to the school, but the boys thought that 
the land and all that grew or was nourished upon it belonged 
to them; so they established their rights to the walnut trees 
and the birds' nests, and afterward to the portions of culti- 
vated grounds. The germs of civilized society were soon 



300 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

developed. " No right without its duty, no duty without 
its rights." Authority, law, penalty, inheritance, trade, cir- 
culating medium, were all evolved by boys. 

Doctor Stanley Hall has published a kindred memoir, in 
which he has described the amusements of children. He 
calls his paper " The Story of a Sand Pile." 

Perhaps we are coming to the time when the comparative 
biography of boys will take its place beside the comparative 
history of nations and the comparative geography of lands. 
We shall not only be able to distinguish how boys differ 
from men, and how their ways differ from those of girls ; but 
we may learn how boys differ from boys, at different periods, 
in different families, with different talents, and with different 
hopes and expectations. 

Boys may be classified into genera and species, not ac- 
cording to what they know, but according to what they are. 
The school affords an easy method of placing them in forms, 
grades, classes — almost as exact as that of the tailor who 
places them in coats of different sizes — but what a boy has 
learned is only one element in an estimate of his worth. It 
is more important to discover what are his capacities, to what 
intellectual and moral group he belongs; what are his ten- 
dencies toward nodosities that must be counteracted; what 
are his aptitudes to be cultivated; what are the habits that 
must be regulated so that they shall be helps and not hin- 
drances in the battle of life. 

With all the accumulated experience of mankind it is still 
extremely difficult to foretell what a boy will become. It 
is possible to predict the speed that a thoroughbred colt will 
approximate, as Professor Brewer has shown, or to anticipate 
the quality of a terrier or a pointer, of an Ayrshire or a Dur- 
ham; but who is wise enough to discover in the nursery the 
coming statesmen, poets, scholars, and divines, or even to 
foretell what qualities will be developed in any group of 
schoolboys? Who can estimate the power of the individual, 



DE JUVENTUTE 301 

the self, the ego, that dwells in each bodily frame, and asserts 
in the course of life its supreme authority ? One of the most 
impressive sermons delivered by Charles Kingsley in West- 
minster Abbey was a sermon on the monosyllable, the mono- 
gram, the monocule I. 

No parent, no teacher, no physician, no philosopher is 
wise enough to speak infallibly upon such important ques- 
tions. There are no logical formulas, no canons of criti- 
cism, no physiological tests by which conclusions may be 
reached. Nevertheless, there are signs and tokens which in- 
dicate the probabilities, and by these the wise instructor, the 
observing mother, the prudent father will be guided. 

One way of arriving at a knowledge of boys is by reminis- 
cence. Old men like to renew their youth by retrospection. 
They imagine themselves young because they recall so 
vividly the days of their childhood, but they are in danger 
both of Scylla and Charybdis. They may err by vanity and 
imagine that they were more excellent than they really 
were ; or they may err by modesty, and blame themselves for 
faults which were not so personal as they were circumstantial. 
In rare cases we may get an introspective view of a boy's life, 
written while he was a boy, but I do not remember any 
masculine diary like that of Marie Bashkirtseff, the prodigy 
of egotism, the genius run wild, the morbid self-auscultator 
who could listen to the beatings of her own heart and regis- 
ter the sounds of her own respiration. 

It is almost a fashion in these days for men who have ac- 
quired distinction to write the memoirs of their boyhood. 
Two of my colleagues, Professor Gildersleeve, the Grecian, 
and Professor Newcomb, the astronomer, have lately pub- 
lished accounts of the " formative influences " to which they 
were subjected. Not long before, President Dwight and 
President A. D. White wrote similar articles. Noteworthy 
Englishmen — Tyndall, Lecky, Farrar, and Frederic Harri- 
son among the number — have written the story of their 



302 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

youth. Ruskin, poet, artist, naturalist, philosopher, is re- 
vealing under such cryptographic titles as " The Springs of 
Wandel," "Heme Hill Almond Blossoms," and "The 
Banks of Tay," the life of a boy as it appears to a septuagen- 
arian. Franklin wrote his autobiography; so did Gibbon, 
Marmontel, and Rousseau; and so we can go farther and 
farther back in history till we reach the Confessions of Saint 
Augustine. It is interesting to notice that among the writers 
of our own day many fall back on the term of the day, 
heredity, which seems to serve equally well as a scapegoat 
and as a mentor. 

The sum of all that I have been able to discover from these 
and many other writings, and from innumerable opportunities 
to study boys, may be very briefly stated. 

Every boy differs from every other boy in character as he 
does in appearance. Even twins, while they closely resemble 
one another in many respects, may differ essentially in fun- 
damental tastes and talents. Mr. Galton says that extreme 
similarity and extreme dissimilarity are nearly as common be- 
tween twins of the same sex as moderate resemblance. If 
this is confirmed, what becomes of heredity? 

The corollary is obvious, that plans of education should as 
far as possible be adapted to individual requirements; but as 
every boy is preparing for life among his fellows, and as 
Providence has so ordered it that he is strongly influenced by 
other boys, it follows that to treat him alone, away from 
comrades, in the backwoods, in a cell, under exclusive in- 
struction, is only justifiable under extraordinary circum- 
stances. He comes into the world not only as an individual, 
with his own responsibilities and possibilities, but as one of a 
family, a neighbourhood, a race, from which he cannot be 
extricated except by death. Isolation is therefore as un- 
natural as it is undesirable and difficult. 

Every boy is influenced both by his inheritance and his 
environment. Yet the laws of heredity in the human species 



DE JUVENTUTE 303 

are not well enough known to give us any certain indications 
of what the child of any parents will become, while the con- 
ditions in which a person lives are as complex as the elements 
that nourish his body, the air he breathes, the water he drinks ; 
as subtle and insinuating as the tones of the voice, the glance 
of the eye, the nod of the head, the pressure of the hand; 
as influential as religious faith, the forms of civil government, 
the habits of society, the lessons of antiquity, the examples of 
good men; and as trifling as a careless word, a thoughtless 
joke, a timely hint, a friendly warning, or a loving smile. 

Until he reaches maturity every boy requires positive guid- 
ance from those who have had a longer experience in the ways 
of the world. It is always cruel, and it may be criminal, to 
allow a youth to experiment for himself upon conduct — to 
say that he must sow his own wild oats, that experience is the 
best teacher, that he must choose his own course. Every 
boy is entitled to know what older persons have discovered 
of the laws of conduct, and to receive restraint, caution, and 
warning until his eyes have been opened and his powers of 
judgment developed. Nobody questions that he ought to 
be taught the laws of health, of diet, of poisons, of climate, 
or the laws that protect his person and his property; and it is 
surprising that anybody should question his right to initiation, 
by stringent discipline, into the laws of intellectual and moral 
well-being. Every boy, whether he wishes it or not, should 
be trained. Yet the contrary doctrine is covertly held, if 
not openly avowed, by many a tender mother and by many 
a generous father. Note the autobiography of John Stuart 
Mill. 

Neither precocity nor dulness is any certain index of the 
future of a boy. Only a wise man can tell the difference 
between the priggishness of conceit and the display of un- 
usual talent, and it takes a superlatively wise man to devise 
right methods for exciting temperaments that are dull, or, 
on the other hand, to guide a genius. Abnormal brilliancy 



30 4 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

and abnormal slowness are usually the result of abnormal 
conditions, and physiologists are only just beginning to show 
to ordinary parents how these unusual conditions may be 
discovered and treated. When we see a man we cannot tell 
what sort of a boy he came from, and when we see a boy 
we cannot tell what sort of a man he will make. The great 
emperor Charles V., who grew old prematurely, was slow 
in his development, and was nearly twenty-one before his 
beard grew. The facts lately collected by Doctor Scripture 
in regard to mathematicians show how impossible it is to 
prophesy in respect to the development of hypothetical genius. 
Some who have risen to great distinction, like Gauss, Ampere, 
Safford, were precocious mathematicians in their youth; 
another boy of extraordinary parts, Thomas Fuller, the 
Virginia calculator, remained an idiot. Daniel Webster, 
greatest of New England orators, broke down, we are told, 
in his early speaking. Most boys that run away from home 
take the road to ruin ; but the liberator of Greece, Sir Richard 
Church, who died a few years ago in Athens, honoured by 
a public funeral and by a monument raised by the Greek 
nation to commemorate his services, was a boy of under size, 
of Quaker parentage, who, before he was sixteen years of 
age, ran away from home, and " took the king's shilling." 

The influence of modern psycho-physiological inquiries 
upon the coming generations is still undetermined. The 
good that is aimed at may, perhaps, surpass the evil that is 
done. Certainly, in these days, when morbid self-conscious- 
ness, extreme sensitiveness, bashfulness, shyness, and timidity 
are so frequently apparent, the wise parent, the wise teacher 
will hesitate before encouraging in his own family or his 
own school too intense and too prolonged introspection. Give 
the boys plenty of open air, and when they cannot have 
this, encourage within-doors exercise in hand-craft, the use 
of tools, and knowledge of the books of sports — not to the 
exclusion of other studies, but as collateral security that the 



DE JUVENTUTE 305 

mind and the body shall be simultaneously developed. As 
an example, the stories that we have of Daniel Webster's 
boyhood are very instructive. You may find them in Morse's 
life of the great orator of New England. The infant was 
a rather sickly little being at its birth, and some cheerful 
neighbours predicted that he would not live long. For many 
years the boy was weak and delicate. Manual labour, the 
common lot of farmers' sons, was out of the question in his 
case. But now hear the other side of the story. " Young 
Webster was allowed to devote much of his time to play, 
to play of the best sort, in the woods and fields." The bar 
and the Senate and the Cabinet tell the conclusion of a 
career which began with such meagre hopes. 

Healthy, out-of-door lives, directed toward objects of en- 
joyment, of observation, of sport, of acquisition, are better 
for boys than exclusive devotion to books, and especially than 
habits of introspection, self-examination, casuistry, journal- 
writing. 

Now let us consider schools. 

Of all the facts that the world has accumulated with 
respect to the art of training, but little has been reduced to 
intelligible terms respecting the methods of producing this 
or that variety of character. Certain general principles have 
certainly been established, like the vague laws of health: 
" Eat nothing improper, drink nothing improper, do nothing 
improper, and you will be well ; " but how shall we counter- 
act the insidious microbe that may ruin all our expectations 
of health and thwart our incessant carefulness? " Go to 
school, learn your lessons, win you diplomas," are directions 
as good as they are simple ; but how shall the bacteria be got 
rid of that appear in the forms of bad company, laziness, lack 
of interest in certain branches of study, inability to master 
the calculus or the Greek subjunctive, deceitful facility, cor- 
rosive vanity, excessive versatility, unusual obstinacy, or that 
incapacity to accept discipline which is the exact reverse of 



3 o6 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

what George Eliot calls " genius " ? Why is it that no school 
of painting can promise to make a great painter of any candi- 
date, however promising ; that no college carr assure a parent 
that his son will become a scholar; that no lesson in English 
composition will make an orator or a poet; that prolonged 
studies in history and politics do not produce statesmen ? Is 
it not still more remarkable that the incessant care of the 
best and wisest parents and teachers is so often counteracted 
by the examples and the temptations of boyhood and 
manhood. 

Schools are not restricted to boyhood. They are the 
arrangements of nature and Providence and society, by 
which, at every stage of our existence, we are prepared for 
something beyond. The cradle is a school, and so is the 
nursery. The kindergarten and the infant class are of a 
little higher grade. Grammar-schools and colleges come next. 
Then come the high-schools that we call universities, with 
their departments of law, medicine, theology, and the liberal 
arts. All along the course are supplementary schools, spread- 
ing out their tentacles for the capture of those who are not 
bound elsewhere. Sooner or later for us all begins the 
pedagogy of life — the school of practice, where the lessons 
of the books are applied to the affairs of men. So Milton 
sings : 

" All is, if I have grace to use it so, 
As ever in my great Task-master's eye." 

Likewise George Herbert: 

" Lord, with what care thou hast begirt us round ! 
Parents first season us, then schoolmasters 
Deliver us to laws; they send us bound 
To rules of reason, holy messengers." 

From the cry of the infant to the last breath of the centen- 
arian, life is one long school, without holidays or vacations, 
Each day has its lessons, each decade its reviews. 



DE JUVENTUTE 307 

We often read in the newspapers that some prominent 
person was a self-made man. Francis Lieber used to ridicule 
this phrase by saying that he should like to stand by while a 
man was making himself. But the absurdity of such a 
phrase has never been more clearly stated than by Mr. 
Charles A. Dana, in his recent eulogy of Horace Greeley. 
Mr. Greeley is an example, almost as striking as Benjamin 
Franklin or Abraham Lincoln, of what a man may become 
without scholastic discipline. The three were men of ex- 
ceptional talent, exceptional vigour, and exceptional power 
of will. Mr. Dana says of Greeley : " He was a man of 
almost no education; indeed, of no education at all except 
what he had acquired for himself," and then he adds these 
sage words: " The worst school that a man can be sent to, 
(and the worst of all it is for a man of genius), is what 
is called a self-education. There is no greater misfortune 
for a man of extraordinary talent than to be educated by 
himself, because he has of necessity a very poor schoolmaster. 
There is nothing more advantageous to an able youth than 
to be thrown into contact with other youths in the conflict 
of study and in the struggle for superiority in the school and 
in the college. That was denied to Mr. Greeley. He knew 
no language but his own; but of that he possessed the most 
extraordinary mastery." 

And now I have a few words to add in respect of what is 
commonly called " the preparatory school," the place where 
boys are prepared for college. Not all its pupils will go to 
college, it is true, but all have chosen, or have been chosen, 
to follow a course of training which, by the common consent 
of educated men, leads up to a college course. " He was 
fitted for college " is a phrase that marks an epoch in educa- 
tion quite as distinctly as the phrase a " Bachelor of Arts." 
It means that a youth of fair parts, during his teens, has been 
taught the elements of mathematical science, and two or 
three languages in addition to his mother-tongue; that he 



3 o8 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

has been introduced to a knowledge of the natural world, 
and that he has some acquaintance with his own country 
and his own stock. It should also mean that he has learned 
the difficult art of study, and has acquired good habits of 
attention, memory, and simple, accurate expression. In 
addition, the phrase is beginning to imply that the boy has 
begun the study of some branch of science, and has at least 
learned how to observe the phenomena of the animate life 
and of the inanimate forces by which he is surrounded. Side 
by side with these intellectual lessons moral discipline is also 
given. 

Certainly one of the first requisites of a good preparatory 
school is bodily discipline. This is partly to be secured by 
watchfulness in respect to posture, diet, repose, gymnastics, 
within the school walls ; it is to be still further promoted by 
abundant exercise in the open air. Manly sports with the 
bat and the oar, running, jumping, bowling, swimming, row- 
ing, riding, fencing, boxing, and, if possible, sailing, are all 
to be encouraged. Nor is military training to be underrated. 
The systematic exercise of every limb and every muscle is 
desirable, not under rules too rigidly laid down by the higher 
authorities, but under regulations spontaneously developed 
by the youth. It is generally conceded that just now, in 
England and this country, there is danger of intemperance 
in sport. This may be less disastrous than intemperance in 
drink or meat ; nevertheless there is such a thing as inebriety 
in athletic games. I do not refer to the danger of broken 
limbs and bruised faces, for they are rarely enduring injuries, 
but to the danger of unfair rivalries, of bad associations, of 
peculiar temptations in the anticipation and enjoyment of 
victory or in the depression of defeat, in the neglect of other 
and higher scholastic duties, in the waste of time and money 
upon costly journeys, perhaps in extravagant hospitality. 
The boys themselves must be encouraged to correct these 
tendencies, but they have a right to expect that we older 



DE JUVENTUTE 309 

boys will remind them of their highest obligations and en- 
courage their fulfilment. With the reasonable control which 
players, teachers, parents can readily exercise, and which the 
young ladies and the newspapers might greatly encourage, 
the just medium can be secured, and athletics continue to 
be an essential factor in the training of American boys. 

The importance of mental habits is sometimes forgotten 
in the eagerness to impart knowledge. Perhaps the colleges 
are more to blame for this than the schools; for the colleges 
receive their pupils on examination, and examinations are 
contrived so as to show sometimes what the freshman knows 
and sometimes what he does not know. Usually the ex- 
aminers have not time, if they have the disposition, and, if 
they have time and disposition they may not have the capacity, 
to put the candidate to any other test than his ability to 
answer certain questions. 

Examinations are a great stumbling-block not only to the 
pupil, but also to the examiner, and I shall not now discuss 
this vexatious theme. However, this much may be said. 
That teacher fails who keeps the coming examination per- 
petually in sight. It is his business to think of the minds of 
his pupils individually, to strengthen, prune, stimulate, train 
the various qualities exhibited by each scholar. He should 
indeed impart knowledge, not forgetful that it is as true in 
the examination-room as anywhere else, " if there be knowl- 
edge, it shall vanish away " ; but he should also enforce the 
formation of habits — and especially at the schoolboy age — of 
close attention, tenacious memory, and accurate statement. 
These three mental virtues are not unworthy to be named 
after faith, hope, and charity, the trinal virtues of Saint Paul 
— attention, memory, truth, and the greatest of these is 
truth. 

The intellectual lessons that boys receive should be so im- 
parted that they may promote the formation of moral habits. 
Accuracy, carefulness, truthfulness of statement, fidelity, 



310 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

thoroughness, courtesy, self-control, deference, consideration, 
respect, temperance, these are virtues that may readily be 
developed while the boy is crossing the pons asinorum or 
stumbling over a sentence of Tacitus. 

" Refrain to-night," said Hamlet to the queen, " and that 
shall lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence; the next 
more easy ; for use almost can change the stamp of nature and 
master the devil or throw him out with wondrous potency." 

The idea of the preparatory school has probably been more 
completely developed in England than in this country, and 
the names of Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Wesminster, and Win- 
chester are almost as famous as those of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge. Rugby is especially familiar to us, partly because of 
the remarkable character of Thomas Arnold, admirably 
portrayed by Dean Stanley, and partly because of the adven- 
tures of Tom Brown — known to every schoolboy, and almost 
as real as the doctor himself. Worthy to be named with 
the story and the memoir are the verses of Matthew Arnold 
on Rugby chapel. "Through thee," the poet says of his 
father, 

" I believe 
In the noble and great who are gone; 
Pure souls, honour'd and blest 
By former ages. . . . 
Yes, I believe that there lived 
Others like thee in the past; 
Not like the men of the crowd 

But souls temper'd with fire, 
Fervent, heroic, and good — 
Helpers and friends of mankind." 

We know less about Mr. Edward Thring, the head-master 
of Uppington School, who has recently died, but it is clear 
that he too was born to be a leader and teacher of boys. I 
have been acquainted in this country, intimately, with a 



DE JUVENTUTE 311 

kindred soul, an English schoolmaster, who, first in Trinity 
School of New York, then at Lake Mohegan, then in a 
college, and at length in a university, exercised over all the 
youth that knew him the strongest intellectual and moral 
influence. Long as they live his pupils will revere Charles 
d'Urban Morris. Such men are robust. Their virility is 
shown in bodily exercises, in scholarship, in politics, in re- 
ligion. They quit themselves like men and are strong. 
Happy the land where they are engaged in the service of 
the boys! 

Characters like those just mentioned have been developed 
in this country. I could name some who are living, beloved, 
honoured, obeyed, and followed. Among the departed, 
Doctor Abbot of Exeter and Doctor Taylor of Andover are 
particularly worthy to be remembered. But, on the whole, 
the tendency of our times is not toward the fostering of such 
teachers. Many of the brightest Americans are attracted 
by business. The three professions traditionally called 
learned, and the modern scientific pursuits enlist great num- 
bers. Of those who devote themselves to teaching, the most 
prefer to enter the service of the college or the university. 
Few only, so far as my acquaintance goes, seek permanent 
careers in the service of boys' schools; few declare that they 
will be satisfied with the opportunities and emoluments of 
a good and faithful teacher. Hence, one of the most delight- 
ful of intellectual pursuits, one of the most useful, one of the 
most honourable, one of the most sacred, is in danger of 
falling into the hands of inferior men. The only remedy 
that I can see is for the head-masters, trustees, and parents 
to be on the watch, and when a born teacher appears, engage 
him, reward him, encourage him, retain him. See that his 
path is free from stones, that he is not overworked or 
harassed, and that he is kept contented in his lot. Let him 
be sure that as much respect and as much income will be 
his as would fall to his portion were he to enter the pulpit 



312 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

or be called to the bar. Let it never be forgotten that the 
teacher's gifts are as rare as the poet's. The methods of 
education can make scholars, pedants, specialists, and a very 
narrow man may live in his den, and benefit the world by 
patient observations and minute researches. But no process 
has been discovered for making teachers. They are like 
gems, that must be found, for they cannot be produced. I 
would rather place a schoolboy under one " all-round man," 
whose manners, morals, and intellectual ways were exem- 
plary, and who was capable of teaching him Homer and 
Euclid, than under a group of specialists selected simply as 
mathematicians, physicists, and linguists. Later on, when 
the character of a boy is established, when his habits are 
formed, when he knows how to study, when he has learned 
the art of acquiring knowledge and the graces of expression, 
let the specialists take hold of him. Even then let it be pro- 
vided that the specialists shall not be too narrow. If possible, 
choose scientific men from the school of Agassiz, Henry, 
Bache, and Dana; and linguists from the school of Woolsey, 
Felton, Whitney, Drisler, and Gildersleeve — men who know 
multa et multum. 

As to the curriculum of a preparatory school, this is not 
the place to measure its limits or its requisites, for they are 
virtually determined by the college authorities, not by the 
schoolmasters. If the colleges say that they will not admit 
as scholars those who fail to show a knowledge of certain 
prescribed studies, the preparatory school must teach those 
studies or must close its doors; there is no middle course. 
Boys are fitted for college in a preparatory school, or they 
are not — that is the only question. Nevertheless, I believe 
that the day is coming when there will be a revision of our 
educational creed, when the colleges will not make their 
entrance examinations such rigid tests of memory as they are 
now, but will contrive to make them tests of power. Is a 
boy capable of carrying forward the studies of the college? — 



DE JUVENTUTE 313 

that must be found out. His capacity to retain and repeat 
what he has learned is one sign of his qualifications, but there 
are many others which a nicer analysis may employ. The 
qualitative test is quite as important as the quantitative. Not 
the size of the brain, but its structure, determines its worth. 
The possession of ten thousand facts may distinguish an idiot, 
but an idiot gives no proper emphasis; he does not perceive 
the difference between the trifling and the fundamental. Yet 
an extraordinary memory may also distinguish a scholar. 
Lord Macaulay, for example, was heard to say that if by 
some miracle of vandalism all copies of " Paradise Lost " and 
the " Pilgrim's Progress " were destroyed, he would under- 
take to reproduce them both from recollection. A scholar 
holds his knowledge in well-arranged groups, under certain 
principles, under certain laws; he is constantly exercising 
his judgment, his discrimination, his reason. He knows 
where to lay the stress; he does not confound the essential 
with its accidents. 

Whenever the time comes for a revision of the curriculum 
of the preparatory school, three subjects should receive much 
more attention than is now given to them. The study of 
science should be so pursued that the habit of close observa- 
tion and of reasoning upon ascertained facts should at least be 
initiated. Nature should be approached by the schoolboy as 
a willing and ever-present teacher. Her lessons should be 
the delight of every adolescent. When we remember that in 
contemplating the heavens, in watching the life of plants and 
animals, in the observation of the modes of motion, and in 
studying the inorganic world there are innumerable and in- 
finitely varied opportunities to awaken curiosity, to train the 
eye and the hand, to exercise the judgment, to reward in- 
vestigation — how strange that so little progress is made in the 
introduction of scientific studies in elementary education! 
Modern languages also, especially French and German, are 
nowadays indispensable in a liberal education; and they are 



3H THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

much more readily acquired in childhood than in maturity. 
How are they to get just recognition in the preparatory 
schools? An acquaintance with the Bible should also be re- 
quired of every schoolboy. College professors have lately 
been showing how ignorant the youth of America are of the 
history, the geography, the biography, and the literature of 
the sacred books. I do not refer to its religious lessons, but 
I speak of the Bible as the basis of our social fabric, as the 
embodiment of the most instructive human experiences, as a 
collection of poems, histories, precepts, laws, and examples, 
priceless in importance to the human race. These Scriptures 
have pervaded our literature. All this inheritance we possess 
in a version which is unique. Its marvellous diction, se- 
cured by the revisions of many centuries, and its substantial 
accuracy, the care of many generations of scholars, are be- 
yond our praise. But how little study does the schoolboy 
give to this book in secular or sacred hours ; how ignorant may 
he really be of that which is supposed to be his daily coun- 
sellor! Science, modern languages, and the Bible have been 
so long neglected in preparatory schools that it is extremely 
hard nowadays to find effective teachers for these subjects. 
There is no consensus as to books, no tradition respecting 
methods. Perhaps we are waiting for the waters to be dis- 
turbed by the angel of deliverance, but we shall wait in vain 
unless we put forth efforts of our own to reach the true 
remedies. The day will come for better things; we can see 
its approaches. 

Meanwhile, it is just as well to remember that there is 
nothing sacred in our present curriculum. It is a method 
which generally produces good results, but it is no catholicon. 
Its defects are perceived by this generation, and the next will 
provide the remedies. Thus slowly move the wheels. 

If now you ask me to sum up the impressions that I have 
endeavoured to convey, remember that in speaking of a 
preparatory school, even in the surroundings of this well- 



DE JUVENTATE 315 

equipped establishment, your thoughts have not been directed 
to the buildings, the apparatus, or the library, to the hon- 
ourary patrons, or to the titular distinctions of the staff, and 
that even the gymnasium and the oval have not been made un- 
duly prominent; but you have been reminded, parents, 
teachers, scholars, that a good preparatory school for boys is 
a place where those who wish a liberal education, and those 
who think that a preparation for college is also a preparation 
for life, are engaged in acquiring physical, intellectual, and 
moral habits. 

" Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, — 
These three alone lead life to sovereign power." 

Biography and psychology agree in teaching us that in the 
development of the man from the boy, four factors are always 
at work: heredity, environment, education, and volition. 
If a simpler form of speech is preferred, let it be this, — 
our parents, our homes, our schools, and our wills make 
ourselves. 



GREEK ART IN A MANUFACTURING 
TOWN OF NEW ENGLAND 



Norwich, Connecticut, one of the oldest and one of 
the most beautiful towns in the State, has two 
characteristics. It is the home of refined and intelli- 
gent people, naturally conservative of their early Eng- 
lish traditions, and ready to lend a hand in all philan- 
thropic, educational, and patriotic movements for the 
good of society. It is also the seat of extensive indus- 
trial establishments, where several thousands of persons 
are engaged in handicrafts. The Norwich Free Acad- 
emy, a high school of the first class, founded more than 
thirty years ago by private subscriptions, protects the 
interests of both these classes, for it offers a superior 
education on terms that all can accept. Mr. William 
A. Slater, the son and heir of a well-known manu- 
facturer, has lately given to this Academy — where he 
was prepared for Harvard College — a large memorial 
building, one hall of which was designed for a 
Museum. This hall he has now filled with a choice 
collection of casts, photographs, coins, examples of 
ancient armour and plate, and other objects brought 
together at his request by Mr. Edward Robinson of the 
Museum of the Fine Arts in Boston. The Museum in 
Norwich was opened November 22, 1888. Professor 
Norton, of Cambridge, gave the principal address — 
a noble appeal for the encouragement of the Fine Arts, 
and a beautiful portrayal of their influence upon the 
highest interests of mankind. When he concluded I 
was called out by the principal of the Academy, Dr. 
Keep, as a native of Norwich and a school boy of the 
old Academy, and I spoke as follows on the possible 
influence of the Slater Museum upon the education 
and industry of Norwich. 



XVIII 

GREEK ART IN A MANUFACTURING TOWN OF NEW ENGLAND 

In the opening of a museum where ancient Greek art pre- 
dominates, may I be allowed to quote certain lines of ancient 
Greek poetry, which, like many of the statues here brought 
together, have come down to us in fragments. I bring these 
lines before you, not in their original form, " but as a re- 
production of the antique." 

Two fragments of Sappho, first joined by Lachmann, have 
thus been rendered : * 

" The bowl of ambrosia was mixed, and Hermes took 
the ladle to pour out for the gods; and then they all held 
goblets, and made libation, and wished the bridegroom all 
good luck." Now if I may, in the presence of Dr. Keep 
and all these learned persons from far and near, reiterate 
these words, I will construe them as follows : " The bowl 
of ambrosia was mixed!* that is, these works of art have been 
brought together; "Hermes took the ladle" — the historian 
of the Fine Arts has told us of the meaning of these treasures ; 
" They all held goblets " — our cups are running over; " they 
made libation, and wished the bridegroom all good luck " — 
so we pour out our gratitude and wish Mr. Slater all good 
luck. May he live a hundred years, and be happy! 

My opportunity on this platform is to utter the thanks of 
the schoolboys and schoolgirls of Norwich, past, present, 
and to come. When I remember how the Academy boys in 
my youth read their Rollin's Ancient History, and pored 
over the pages of old Lempriere, without so much as a margi- 
nal cut to aid their imagination, how photographs and casts 

i By Henry T. Wharton, of Oxford in his "Sappho," Lond., 1887. 

319 



320 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

were unknown, and the tale of a returning traveller was al- 
most as rare as the voice of a nightingale, — and then turn to 
the wealth of illustrations collected beneath this roof — books, 
plates, photographs, casts, coins, and reproductions of ancient 
plate — a collection unsurpassed, perhaps unequalled, by an)' 
that is owned by any college in the land, the libation of ad- 
miration and gratitude is most heartily poured out. Here is 
a museum already well filled with objects carefully chosen, 
charmingly arranged, well catalogued, and freely opened. 
" Well thought out, well wrought out, well brought out." 
A new intellectual force has been here introduced — destined 
to awaken, develop, and instruct the love of beauty. Con- 
sider what this means. " The poetic passion, the desire 
of beauty, the love of art for art's sake, is most re- 
warding," says Pater, " for art comes to you professing to 
give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they 
pass, and simply for the moment's sake." Let us con- 
sider this utterance with an immediate reference to the es- 
tablishment of a museum in the town of Norwich. What 
will be its educational value? 

Some young artists will certainly be helped by these col- 
lections at the beginning of their careers. The creative mind 
may yet be born or bred in this community — it may be that 
one is here already — who will find his aspirations quickened, 
his soul enlarged, his knowledge extended, and his skill en- 
hanced by the sight of these masterpieces of antiquity and of 
the renaissance. Let me remind you that the one American 
painter of the revolutionary period, whose works are now re- 
membered, Colonel John Trumbull, was a schoolboy in 
Lebanon before he graduated in Harvard College, and that 
one of the very few sculptors whose works are held in honour 
by their native State was a schoolboy in Colchester before 
he went abroad. I remember visiting Bartholomew, this 
Connecticut sculptor, in his studio in Rome, and I heard 
him quote, with the bitterness of conscious yet unencouraged 



GREEK ART 321 

talent, words with which the father of Colonel Trumbull 
endeavoured to dissuade his son from the business of a 
" limner " — " My son, remember that Connecticut is not 
Athens." If talent appears in our day, opportunity stands 
ready to extend a welcome ; much more will genius be greeted 
by a helping hand. 

But this museum will benefit a wider circle than that of 
the prospective artists. To any student it may prove to be 
the interpreter of history, the key to human culture, the guide 
to monuments of past civilisation. Here light is thrown upon 
the art, the architecture, the decorations, the coinage, the 
biography, the mythology, the religion of the most interest- 
ing epochs of the past. New interest will likewise be im- 
parted to the study of ancient literature, whether the classics 
are read in their original form or in the masterly translations 
which modern scholarship has given us. Nor will this 
museum interpret ancient books alone. The visitor to these 
galleries will soon begin to ask for Winckelmann's " History 
of Art," and for Lessing's "Laocoon"; Wordsworth's 
" Greece," and the records of recent discoveries in Olympia, 
Mycenae, and Troy will be read with fresh interest ; Ruskin, 
Taine, Pater, Symonds, Hamerton will be in demand; the 
Earthly Paradise will be revisited, and the Marble Faun will 
renew its youth; nor will the new volume of Lanciani, 
carried through the press by the same skilful hands that have 
arranged this museum, fail to be read, as it describes with 
the enthusiasm of an archaeological Columbus the discovery 
of sites and monuments unknown a few years since. 

To many in this audience these will seem the highest, and 
perhaps the only educational uses of a museum like this. Yet 
when I remember that most of the inhabitants of this town — 
I should think at least three-fourths — are dependent for daily 
bread upon the daily toil of somebody; that they owe their 
livelihood, directly or indirectly, to the industry of manufac- 
tures, I shall offer no apology for dwelling upon another re- 



322 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

suit which may be expected to follow this auspicious begin- 
ning — a result, less obvious, perhaps more subtle, than those 
before mentioned, but not less important, not less enduring. 
I allude to the influence of art upon industry. 

With other New England towns, Norwich prospers, not 
because it is near the supplies of coal and iron, like Birming- 
ham, Manchester, Pittsburg, and Liege — but because of the 
skill it employs in using the products that are brought here 
from a distance. It applies brains to labour. The people are 
ingenious, enterprising, thrifty, and industrious, and they 
know how to turn the raw materials of distant regions into 
the finest of cotton fabrics, the best of printing paper, into 
complex machinery, pistols that will hit the mark, blankets, 
stoves, and I know not how many other products of the loom, 
the machine-shop, or the foundry. This is just as it should 
be. But far-sighted manufacturers are well aware that in all 
these forms of industry the competition of the world is 
bringing forward new rivals. Beyond the Alleghenies, and 
far south of Mason and Dixon's line, staple manufactures 
are now established. To maintain its pre-eminence, Nor- 
wich must continue to apply its brains to its labour; it must 
do what it undertakes better than can be done elsewhere. 
It must continue to devise labour-saving processes and ma- 
chines, and it must make its products attractive. The art- 
element in Norwich manufactures is as yet scarcely mani- 
fested. In the future, beauty must be added to utility; to 
solidity, grace must be given; art must be allied to craft. 
Norwich must remember that the manufactures of Paris, 
Vienna, and Berlin spread the wide world over because they 
are so attractive. No amount of duties will exclude them. 
People who have the money will buy what they like, and the 
number of people who like the beautiful in form, in colour, 
in material, and in decoration increases far more rapidly than 
the population. 

Now to show the bearing of these remarks on the possi- 



GREEK ART 323 

bilities of this museum, let me repeat a story, told before. 
Nearly twenty years ago, in company with a citizen of 
Norwich whose name always awakens the sentiment of ad- 
miration and gratitude, Governor Buckingham, the patriot, 
I visited a well-known factory where the best and most 
beautiful of carpets are made — those which are known in the 
market as English Brussels. " Where do you get your de- 
signs," said I, "from the English manufacturers?" "Oh, 
no," said the superintendent, " our patterns are original." 
" Do you mean that they are the work of American de- 
signers? " " Not that," he replied, " they are sent to us by 
mail from Paris." " Why don't you bring the designers 
here? " " We have tried to," was his answer, " but they will 
not come. They say that they would dry up in New Eng- 
land. Here is nothing suggestive; nothing stimulating; 
nothing critical in the way of art." 

Now for the other side. What makes Paris so fertile in 
the arts of design? Why is it that in every branch of orna- 
mental industry French taste is preferred ? Why are articles 
de Paris, the bronzes, the jewellery, the silks, the laces, the 
stationery, the upholstery, the tapisserie, the book binding, 
the clocks, the porcelains, the vases, the ornaments of every 
sort, so attractive, so beautiful ? It is because of the art em- 
ployed in their design. And whence this art? Go back 
two hundred years or more and you will find in public life 
at Paris one of the most versatile, enlightened, and influential 
statesmen that has ever lived — a statesman whose renown 
does not rest on strategy or war, but who won the proud 
title of the Minister of Peace. This statesman was Colbert. 
Not all that is known as Colbertism is to be upheld, — but one 
thing he did which entitles him to the highest praise. He 
gave all the influence of his high station to the encouragement 
of science, literature, and art. He laid the foundations of the 
Louvre, that great museum of art. A very large number of 
the paintings and statues in that collection were bought by 



324 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

his command. At his request, the Abbe Benedetti in Rome 
caused casts to be made of all the most celebrated statues and 
vases, and a little later, Evrard, Director of the Academy 
of Rome, was directed to copy and send to Paris everything 
beautiful of whatever kind. From that period until now 
Paris has maintained its supremacy in artistic manufac- 
ture. 

Perhaps at some future time Norwich may have an ex- 
hibition of " Arts and Crafts " like that which has recently 
been held in London. Certainly to the promotion of Arts 
and Crafts the collections of the Slater Museum will tend. 
But let it not be forgotten that beyond the pleasure to be 
afforded to the purchaser, the pleasure to be afforded 
to the workman is incalculable. Upon this point, the im- 
pressive words of Professor Norton, to which we have 
just listened, need no emphasis from me. Let us take his 
admonitions home. But let me commend to the authorities 
of this academy another word of the orator of the day. In 
speaking of the present condition of intellectual life in 
America, he says: 

"It is to the institutions which provide the means of the 
highest education that the best interests of our national life 
are specially committed. ... If life in America is 
to become worthy of its unparalleled opportunities, . . . 
it is by the support, the increase, the steady improvement of 
the institutions devoted to the highest education of youth." 3 

Let the managers of this academy enlarge its facilities, in- 
crease its staff of teachers, widen the opportunities to profit 
by this noble gift. 

I will not detain you longer — ladies and gentlemen who 
have favoured me with your attention — from a return to the 
galleries now open to you, but as I began with a fragment 
from Sappho, I will close with a fragment from Sophocles 

3 Professor Norton in the New Princton Review, November, 1888. 



GREEK ART 325 

and with these words bid you enter the hall where the faces 
of Sappho and of Sophocles will welcome you: 

" Let us now go, O boys, to where the wise 
Impart their knowledge of the muses' arts, 
Each day we need to take some forward step 
[Till we gain power to study nobler things." 
(Plumptre's Version.), 



A STUDY IN BLACK AND WHITE 



Mr. Morris K. Jesup, of New York, presented to the 
Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute a building 
which he named after General S. C. Armstrong and 
Mr. John F. Slater, the Armstrong-Slater Trade School 
Building; and by request of the authorities, the fol- 
lowing address was delivered when the building was 
thrown open to the public on November 18, 1896. 



XIX 

A STUDY IN BLACK AND WHITE 

An occasion like this suggests delightful memories, — such 
as those to which your attention has been called, — of Slater, 
the philanthropist; of Armstrong, the inspiring leader; and 
of many others who have worked in their spirit. It suggests 
congratulations to Dr. Frissell and his staff of teachers, on 
this addition to their means of instruction. It suggests en- 
couragement to all who are engaged in the uplifting of the 
Negro, and anticipations of even better results in the future 
than have been attained in the past. 

What does this assembly represent? On the one hand, 
those who stand for the best that the white race has produced, 
the fruit of many generations, developed under the sunshine 
of freedom, religion and education; and, on the other hand, 
those who represent the capacity, the hopes, and the prospects 
of races but lately emerging from bondage or barbarism, error 
and illiteracy. The light-bearers are here, ready to hand to 
the light-seekers the torch which shall illuminate the path of 
progress. 

Have you never seen, in a lecture on physics, two mirrors 
so constructed and so placed that the rays of a lighted candle 
are collected upon one reflector, and sent to the opposite re- 
flector, and there so concentrated as to light a candle placed in 
the focus of the latter? This image may illustrate our atti- 
tude to-day. Those who have freely received the light bestow 
it upon those who stand in need. Giving does not im- 
poverish. The two candles shed more light and heat than 
one. 

What does this occasion signify? It signifies that the 

329 



330 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY; 

work of Hampton, already most successful, is to be enlarged 
and made better. A new building, constructed by private 
generosity, is now opened for instruction in the methods 
which underlie those trades that must be practised in every 
part of the country. 

Under these circumstances, I invite you to "A Study in 
Black and White," leading up to an appreciation of the re- 
wards of skilful work, the pleasures of exertion. 

Two papers have lately been prepared for the John F. 
Slater Trustees by Mr. Henry Gannett, of Washington; the 
one devoted to the movement of the coloured population ; its 
vitality, its rate of increase in different regions and its tenden- 
cies toward city life; the other, an original study (not to be 
found elsewhere) of the occupations of the Negro, as shown 
by the data collected in the last United States Census. With 
these statistics should be read Dr. Curry's paper in the same 
series, on the Progress of the Education of the Negro ; and a 
still more recent summary, by the same high authority, on the 
general progress of Education in the Southern States during 
the last thirty years, presented last October to the Trustees 
of the Peabody Educational Fund. 

The study of these papers will assure anybody that the 
results that have been accomplished since the war are simply 
astounding. Great exertions, indeed, have been put forth, 
and great sacrifices have been made. Large sums of money 
have been contributed by private individuals, and generous 
appropriations have been devoted to public instruction in 
almost every Southern State; but the outcome far surpasses 
the highest anticipations. For example, in the Hampton 
Institute, we may see, in a microcosm, what is in progress 
throughout the vast territory of the United States. I will 
not, however, deny that Hampton stands at the front among 
the agencies devoted to the education of the coloured people. 

Never in the record of mankind, before our times, have 



A STUDY IN BLACK AND WHITE 331 

millions of slaves — whose ancestors in former generations 
had been the children of ignorance and superstition — re- 
ceived in a day the privileges of citizens, become equal before 
the law and entitled to all the rights, duties, and responsi- 
bilities of freemen. We are dealing at Hampton with a few 
hundreds of the more intelligent and capable of their race. 
The same work goes on at Tuskegee and elsewhere, but these 
select and favoured scholars are chosen out of eight millions 
of the blacks, and these eight millions are but the forerunners 
of a hundred millions who will come after them. It is no 
wonder that the statesmen, the philanthropists, and the sci- 
entific men of the world are looking with profound interest 
upon the solution of a problem which is unprecedented in the 
history of mankind. 

Now let us bring to mind the actual condition of affairs 
in this country. Congress has conferred upon the Negro the 
rights and duties and responsibilities of citizenship. Churches 
of all denominations are spreading the gracious influences of 
the Christian religion. Private philanthropy gives special 
education. The action of every State in the Union main- 
tains public schools. Thus we may say that, in this country, 
the black man is receiving or has received through the white 
man three great benefits — political freedom, the Christian 
religion, and the opportunity to acquire knowledge. 

At the present time we can only consider the third of these 
great opportunities. As I have already said, the public 
school system is open to the blacks as to the whites through- 
out the Union. Opportunities are also provided for the 
exceptional cases that require professional instruction. There 
are also special foundations, some managed by the States and 
some by beneficent associations, some supported by public 
funds and some by private or ecclesiastical liberality, and 
some by partial aid from the Slater and Peabody funds. 
Such is the work now going forward. 

Let us look toward the future. The education of a race is 



332 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

a very complex subject if we think of it as a whole; but if 
we remember that the education of a race means the educa- 
tion of the individuals in that race, the problem is simplified, 
for we quickly perceive that the training of every person in- 
volves three elements — the formation of habits, the acqui- 
sition of skill and the performance of work. Accordingly, 
that institution or school is best which enforces habits of 
order, attention, obedience, discrimination, memory; which 
then secures skill in hand-craft and rede-craft, and likewise 
shows how these habits and this skill may be applied in 
useful avocations. 

Careful observers are agreed that among the blacks there is 
at this time the special need of well-trained teachers, artisans, 
and tillers of the soil, and that Hampton and other Institu- 
tions engaged in kindred work should introduce, as far as 
possible, the methods of " the new education " which have 
been developed among the whites during the last half century. 
This " new education," as it is called, is largely the educa- 
tion of the hand. 

During the present generation there has been a remarkable 
change in the instruction of whites in schools of every grade, 
from the Kindergarten to the University. In one form or 
another, hand-craft has been restored to the place from which 
it was long excluded by rede-craft. The change has not been 
accomplished without experiment, controversy, difficulty, and 
failure ; but, at last, I think we may claim that the victory is 
won and that no scheme of study can be regarded as complete 
unless the study of books is constantly supplemented by the 
study of objects. The young must be taught to acquire 
knowledge by the observation of nature and her forces, as 
well as by reading the observations of others respecting 
nature; and the character must be developed not merely by 
the exercise of memory and by the interpretation of written 
documents, but also by the training of our youth to useful 
occupations. 



A STUDY IN BLACK AND WHITE 3 33 

It is hardly necessary to say that useful occupations are as 
varied as the ages of men and the wants of civilised society. 
The pen, the pencil, the needle, the knife, the retort, the lathe, 
the carpenter's chest, the blacksmith's forge, the microscope 
and the telescope, the dynamo, the steam engine — all of these, 
vastly as they differ from one another, are implements 
by which hand-craft is acquired, by which work is per- 
formed. 

Experience has shown that this training may have four 
objects, — any one of them, or all. 

1. The training of the hand, which should begin in very 
early life and should never be given up, — or Manual 
education. 

2. The employment of this training in useful pursuits and 
occupations, especially those of fundamental value, like 
working in wood, metals, bricks, stone, etc. — or Industrial 
education. 

3. The acquisition of some important art or trade, the 
making of artisans, builders, mechanics, skilled farmers, etc. — 
or Technical training. 

4. The advancement of knowledge and the prosecution of 
research, — or Scientific training. 

Do not suppose that the boundary lines between these four 
groups are sharp and clear; each overlaps the other. The 
most advanced chemist and electrician is still disciplining his 
hand to greater facility. The work of the surgeon, as long 
as he practises, is in the discipline of his hand. He is fitly 
called a chirurgeon, a hand-worker. 

Let us now think of three callings in which many, perhaps 
most of the Hampton graduates, are likely to be engaged. 

1. Teachers. It used to be thought that anybody could 
teach who knew a little more than the scholar. Now it is 
demonstrated that methods of instruction are just as im- 
portant as the matter of instruction ; that good teachers must 
know the best arts of awaking the dull, guiding the way- 



334 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

ward, and developing the promising ; and that they themselves 
should be trained in hand-craft. Women are especially fitted 
for this work, particularly in elementary schools. Dr. Stan- 
ley Hall, in a recent speech at South Hadley, pleads for 
chairs of pedagogics for women, " not only because she does 
most of the teaching in this world, but because the school is 
good almost in direct proportion as it becomes like home." 
Now teachers must be themselves fitted for their vocation. 
They must learn how to awaken in their scholars a love of 
exertion. 

2. Farmers. The whites have only just waked up to the 
importance of training men to be farmers. In a recent notice 
in the North American Review Mr. Harwood has summed 
up the experience of the United States since the first Agri- 
cultural College in the United States was established in 
Michigan in 1857, an d tne 6 rst Experiment Station in Con- 
necticut in 1875. Anyone who will look at that report, or 
at the papers printed by the U. S. Department of Agricul- 
ture, or at such illustrations of the work of that department 
as are on exhibition constantly in Washington and occa- 
sionally elsewhere (as at Chicago, Atlanta, etc.), will per- 
ceive that to be skilled in agriculture is to be skilled in one of 
the most interesting the most complex, the most difficult, 
and the most useful of all human occupations. When in- 
telligence guides the operations of the farm, those operations, 
those pursuits are elevating, stimulating, and rewarding. 

3. Artisans. Under this term may be included all who 
work in any branch of the mechanical arts or with any kind 
of instrument or machine. The progress made in industrial 
education, within the limits of a single generation, is mar- 
vellous. Prior to the great exhibition in Philadelphia little 
was known as to the methods suitable for training artisans. 
Scientific schools had indeed been established for advanced 
professional life, and, to some extent, technical institutes were 
provided for the training of chemists, engineers, and the like ; 



A STUDY IN BLACK AND WHITE 335 

but, in this country at least, the training of mechanics had 
been very much neglected. The exhibition just referred to 
brought clearly before the American teachers the processes 
devised by Dellavos, a Russian, in 1868. The keynote to 
the methods that he employed was this, " Instruction before 
Construction." Professor Woodward of St. Louis declares 
that this made a revolution in industrial training. Read his 
article on Manual Training in the new edition of Johnson's 
Encyclopaedia. 

In a valuable report by Mr. Addis on Negro Education, 
lately printed (U. S. Bureau of Education) I noticed the re- 
mark : that nearly all the schools for the blacks, say, in their 
catalogues, that their principal object is to teach the " Dig- 
nity of Labour " ; and another writer, in the Southern Work- 
man, makes a similar remark. I would rather speak of the 
Enjoyment of Work; enjoyment which may have these ele- 
ments : the acquisition of a livelihood for one's self and others, 
or pecuniary reward ; the pleasure of exercising the powers of 
body with which we are endowed; and the employment of 
skill. In other words, there may be, there should be, in 
rightly directed labour, moral, physical and intellectual 
enjoyment. 

The very history of the word " work," if you will look it 
up, is an epitome of the history of civilisation. From the 
Greeks to the Saxons, from the Saxons to the English, from 
the English to the Americans, from the Americans to the 
Africans, the word is handed down. " Work, work, work," 
has distinguished every progressive and prosperous race. 
" Sloth, sloth, sloth," has been the characteristic of decadence 
and imbecility. The writer, the poet, the musical composer, 
the artist are remembered by their " Works." The builder, 
the farmer, the artisan are good or bad workmen. The 
president of the United States, the editor of a great news- 
paper, the head of a large school, the owner of great fac- 
tories, the leader of an army, and the navigator of a ship, 



336 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

work harder, if they are successful, than the clerks, the type- 
setters, the assistants, the soldiers and the sailors they employ. 

Those who are interested in the uplifting of the blacks, 
believe that, next to freedom and religion, the greatest boon 
that the more favoured can bestow upon the less favoured is 
to give them opportunities for becoming skilled " workmen." 
It may strike some of you with surprise when I say that 
work is one of the greatest privileges enjoyed by mankind. 
For one, I give thanks every day that I have the capacity, 
the opportunity and the taste for work, and I wish that every 
man and woman in the land could have the same satisfaction 
that I enjoy in the performance of daily tasks. 

May I urge upon you, my hearers, a like recognition of 
the pleasure of work — not mere animal exertion, although 
that may have its pleasures, but the combination of intelli- 
gence with labour. As President Hayes said : " Add to 
labour intelligence and to scholarship handicraft." Or, as 
Booker T. Washington said in his Fifteenth Report: 
" Right here comes the value of industrial education com- 
bined with first-class literary training; it has a modifying, 
sobering influence, resulting in teaching the coloured youth 
that the road to the highest permanent success and develop- 
ment is by slow gradations, and nature permits of no reversal 
of the process." 

It is idle to suppose that the evils of poverty, of ignorance, 
or of misfortune can be removed by simple acts of legislation. 
Good government can do much to protect the society over 
which it rules; but it can never affect the operation of the 
natural law that work brings prosperity and sloth brings 
misery. We all do well to remember what President Cleve- 
land said at Princeton: "When the attempt is made to 
delude the people into the belief that their suffrage can change 
the operation of natural laws, I would have our universities 
and colleges proclaim that those laws are inexorable and far 
removed from political control." 



A STUDY IN BLACK AND WHITE 337 

My appeal, then, to the pupils of Hampton Is this: wher- 
ever your lot may be cast, in the city or in the town, in 
the schoolroom or the shop, on the farm or on the railroad, 
be exemplars of skilled labour, and never listen to those who 
would lead you to think that you can rise by any other 
process than the exercise of your own free will and the 
exertion of your own intelligence. The same laws govern 
the whites and the blacks; human nature is the same every- 
where, and the sooner everybody discovers that the con- 
ditions of success in life are dependent upon toil, intellectual 
or physical, or both combined, the better it will be for the 
entire community. 

Here are the words of a distinguished economist of Eng- 
land, addressed to his own countrymen, and all the more 
impressive to us because the lesson was not called out by any 
desire to deal with questions which divide and concern us : 

" The growth of society has been distorted by partial and 
injurious laws, and the distortion will not be removed by the 
removal of the causes which induced it. You cannot as the 
adventurer in the Greek comedy does, take the nation, and, 
by some magic bath, restore it from decrepitude, disease, vice, 
dirt, drunkenness, and ignorance, to manliness, health, virtue, 
self-respect, sobriety, knowledge, forethought, and wisdom, at 
a stroke. It will need long years of patient and disappoint- 
ing labour before the marks imprinted by centuries of misrule 
and wrong-doing are effaced. And furthermore, the re- 
newal, if it is to come, cannot be imposed from without. It 
must be developed from within. Beyond the removal of 
positive mischief, which it has in past times created, the legis- 
lature can do little more than give every freedom it can for 
innocent energy, and check all the mischief, as far as is pos- 
sible, which comes from the strong domineering over the 
weak. If it does too much, it enfeebles enterprise and dis- 
courages practical wisdom. If it neglects to adequately pro- 
tect the weak, and thereby gives license to selfishness and 



338 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

fraud, it permits a trouble for which it has assuredly to 
find a remedy.' ' 

In concluding these remarks, let me express a belief that 
the distinction between the two races is as permanent as the 
distinction between the colours white and black ; that this dis- 
tinction is natural and cannot be set aside by human action; 
that the lessons of history make it clear that differences of 
race are ineffaceable, by legislation or volition. They are 
doubtless implanted in us for some purpose which our limited 
intelligence is unable to descry. It is of no consequence 
whether we " like to think so " or not. The stars move in 
their orbits without regard to mortal wishes. Whites or 
Blacks, it is our duty to recognise what is true ; to make each 
race as good as it can be made; to discover and develop such 
qualities as tend to its improvement ; to eradicate those which 
are degrading; to help the people that are downcast, by giv- 
ing them the uplifting influences of freedom, religion and 
education; and especially to teach them the uses of skilled 
labour; and then — it is our duty to leave the outcome to 
Providence — never forgetting and never hiding the fact and 
never fearing to say, that deeper than all distinctions of race, 
is the basis of human nature; lower down than all the 
idiosyncracies by which human nature is differentiated we 
find the Brotherhood of man and the Fatherhood of God. 

In a Northern University, looking westward over Cayuga 
Lake, stands a granite bench, the gift of Goldwin Smith, on 
which he has engraved the words, "Above all nations is 
Humanity." Here, facing southward, on the portal of one 
of these halls I would inscribe, " Beneath all race distinctions 
is the Brotherhood of man ; above all men is the Fatherhood 
of God." 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 



Among various addresses which I have delivered 
with respect to the promotion of Civil Service Reform, 
I have selected that which was given as President of 
the Civil Service Reform League, at Washington, 
in 1904. 



XX 

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

It is among the privileges of the veterans (an evergrowing 
body to which, if you live long enough, you will all belong), 
to indulge in reminiscences. Younger men must be active in 
the field ; older men may study the principles of stategy and 
try to indicate the essentials of success. As civil service re- 
formers, young and old, perhaps both old and young, we 
belong to an army so vast and complex, having such a 
variety of weapons, sometimes defensive and oftener offen- 
sive (undoubtedly offensive, if not intentionally so), that no 
one in the fighting ranks can estimate the operations of each 
corps. 

It is not amiss, therefore, for those who are out of active 
service, to place themselves in the rear, gather in the reports, 
sum up the gains or the losses, and consider the results al- 
ready obtained, for the use of more serviceable combatants. 

Leaving, then, to other speakers the specific topics which 
require immediate and deliberate discussion, I shall present 
some desultory reflections of an observer upon the progress 
of civil government, and upon efforts made by reformers of 
other days to promote the welfare and progress of society. 
These reflections must be brief and of course inadequate, — 
merely suggestive, it is true, — but possibly they may germ- 
inate, and lead, in the near hereafter, to ampler and abler 
presentations of the theme. But for the sake of those who 
have not been present at former meetings of the League, I 
must begin with some facts of recent history. 

Geographers of the school of Ritter and Guyot have taught 
us that to understand the earth as a whole we must know 

34i 



342 THE LAUNCING OF A UNIVERSITY 

something of the pleasant places where our lines have fallen ; 
and a current witticism, attributed to a Cantabrigian, de- 
clares that "to be truly cosmopolitan, a man must know 
something of his own country." Acting in accordance with 
this principle, before we look beyond, let us consider the 
recent history and the actual condition of civil service re- 
form in this country, with a hope that although a brief epit- 
ome will sound trite to the silver greys in this assembly, 
it may be fresh to the new recruits. At any rate here 
it is. 

The evils of the spoils system, unknown in the earlier 
days of this Republic, multiplied with the fecundity of bac- 
teria, from the days of Andrew Jackson to those of recon- 
struction under Andrew Johnson. The Bacillus Tennessee- 
ensis did much harm to the body politic. Consequently in 
1868 the need of reform became so apparent that it was 
brought into practical politics by the memorable activity of a 
Representative of Rhode Island, Hon. Thomas L. Jenckes. 
Several years later, Dorman B. Eaton produced his book upon 
English " abuses and reforms," a book which remains to this 
day a vade-mecum of the veterans, and may be commended, 
as a pilot's own book, to all young navigators in the sea of 
politics. In 1883, the Pendleton bill, establishing the 
National Civil Service Commission, became a law by the sig- 
nature of President Arthur. The way had been prepared 
for this enactment by the administration of President Hayes, 
in whose cabinet sat an untiring advocate of reform, our for- 
mer President, our constant support, our wise counsellor, 
Hon. Carl Schurz. One of these days the world will know 
(what we can now surmise), how much was due to his 
patient wisdom as a Secretary and a Senator. 

Since the National Civil Service Commission was or- 
ganised under Dorman B. Eaton, we have passed the twenty- 
first mile stone. This is an era from which to date. At our 
last annual meeting a paper from Mr. Foulke, supplemented 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 343 

by one from Commissioner Greene, reviewed the progress of 
this period, so that all that is now essential is to give the latest 
summary prepared for us in the office of the Commissioners. 
By the kindness of Commissioner Greene, I present these 
figures, not yet published, which will appear in the twenty- 
first report of the Commissioners. It is a remarkable record, 
worthy of careful attention and of tenacious remembrance. 
On June 30, last, the whole number of positions in the 
executive civil service was nearly 300,000, of which more 
than one-half were competitive. The exact enumeration is 
as follows: the whole number of positions in the executive 
civil service was 290,858, of which 154,093 were compet- 
itive, 80,798 were excepted, 49,254 unclassified, and 6,203 
Presidential. 

During the past year 133,069 persons were examined, 
103,718 passed and 50,830 were appointed. As compared 
with the previous year, it is an increase of 20,011 in the 
number examined, 15,582 in the number that passed and 
10,407 in the number appointed. From the same com- 
munication I gather these additional particulars. There has 
been a reduction of 1 1 per cent, in the number of temporary 
appointments without examination in the service at Washing- 
ton, as compared with the appointments of those standing 
highest upon examination. There has probably also been a 
reduction of about 3 per cent, in the number of temporary 
appointments outside of Washington. 

On November 15, 1904, the President adopted improved 
labour regulations for the service at Washington. An in- 
creasing observance has been shown of the prohibition of 
the assignment of unclassified labourers to classified work. 

During the year there has been very marked progress 
in the observance not merely of the letter, but of the spirit 
of the act and rules, and noticeable absence of complaints in 
political activity and assessments. 

In view of all this expansion of the merit system it has 



344 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

been a great satisfaction to read in both political platforms 
commendation of the principles of civil service reform. 

Gratifying beyond measure has been the recognition of 
civil service principles, and the introduction of the merit 
system to the Philippines. From these examples of good ad- 
ministration in our dependencies, the stay-at-home observers 
in the United States may derive instruction and encour- 
agement. 

May I not be accused of undue partisanship if I remind 
you that the President of the United States, just elected by an 
overwhelming vote, was once a member of the National Civil 
Service Commission. His writings are on record, services 
in New York and Washington in behalf of the cause are well 
remembered, and his official actions, since he entered upon his 
exalted station, assure the League that he is still a most ef- 
ficient promoter of those measures of which for so long a 
time he has been a distinguished and efficient advocate. I 
have no authority to speak for him, but I am confident that 
he will be satisfied (as we may be also), if he is judged by 
what he does as well as by what he says. 

Before I pass on from this review, let us bring to mind the 
fact that the. progress of the last ten years is largely due to 
that admirable man, Hon. John R. Proctor, Civil Service 
Commissioner under the administrations of Cleveland, Mc- 
Kinley and Roosevelt. He was for many years a geologist, 
and by the truth-seeking methods developed in his career as 
a scientific man, he became a master of all known facts re- 
specting the condition of our civil service, and a recognised 
authority with respect to past experience and future require- 
ments. Those who heard his voice at the last meeting of the 
League in Baltimore, alas, so soon followed by his sudden 
death, have a vivid memory of his strong personality, his 
calm and judicial speech and his abiding faith in the merit 
system. All his colleagues bear testimony to his official 
fidelity, his skilful persuasiveness, his appreciation of ob- 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 345 

stacles and opportunities, and his devotion to the country's 
good. He was truly a statesman. What better can we say 
of him than to apply to him the familiar words of Words- 
worth, portraying the Happy Warrior ? Among those mem- 
bers of the Commission who have " gone over to the ma- 
jority," three will always have especial honour, — George 
William Curtis, Dorman B. Eaton and John R. Proctor. 

From modern instances let us now recur to some early 
reformers, and discover, if we can, the lessons suggested by 
their examples or derived from their speeches. A great 
deal may be learned from historical research. For example, 
much wisdom may be found in the utterances of the ancient 
prophets of Israel, but I will not quote that which ought to 
be familiar. 

The first aphorism that I bring forward is that the ad- 
vocate of righteousness in politics must never expect im- 
mediate approbation. Let him rather look for obloquy and 
think himself fortunate if he does not receive of it good 
measure, pressed down and running over. For his instruc- 
tion let him read Plutarch's story of one whom I venture to 
call one of the earliest civil service reformers, Aristides the 
Just, ostracised from Athens twenty-four hundred years 
ago. Every schoolboy used to know why. A citizen, when 
asked why he wished the name of Aristides to be written on 
the voter's sherd, replied, " Because I am tired of hearing 
him everywhere called the Just." * But Aristides, though 
his fame may have bored his contemporaries, was recalled 
three years after his exile and placed in stations of service and 
honour. 

Another example is that of Savonarola, who merited the 
name of "the Saviour of Florence" (given to him by a 
contemporary and repeated by his most recent biographer) 
may receive the honour, as saints are sometimes canonised 

1 Aristides, tt the request of an illiterate voter, voted againit 
himself. 



346 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

long after their death, of being designated as one of the 
most famous promoters in the time of the Italian republics, 
of civil and municipal reform. He it was who overthrew 
" the rule of the ring " in Florence and incited the people to 
vindicate their rights. Never in modern times, not even 
when Tilden and his co-workers overthrew the boss of New 
York, have there been such civic upheavals in behalf of good 
government. In the elaborate and scholarly memoir of this 
renowned reformer, by an author of the highest authority, 
Professor Villari, there are many instructive passages in re- 
spect to the evils then endured by the municipality and the 
struggles which were made to overcome these civic iniquities. 
I will read two brief passages which show the influence of 
one man devoted, regardless of personal consequences, to 
municipal reform. These are the words of Villari, quite sug- 
gestive to reformers of the twentieth century: 

" Savonarola did not invent any of the institutions he 
persuaded Florence to adopt, and this really constituted his 
chief merit. Institutions are neither created nor conceived; 
they come into existence as the result of the times and con- 
ditions of the people. He rediscovered them, as it were; 
and recognising their value, succeeded in persuading the 
nation to adopt them; and what higher meed of praise can 
be given to his political sagacity ? We repeat that Savonarola 
was more clear sighted than the other man, simply because 
his eyes were sharpened by natural good sense and earnest 
benevolence, and his mind was unperplexed by theories, his 
heart undisturbed by party spirit. He therefore deserves to 
be ranked among the greatest founders of republican states." 

" Again," says Villari, " . . . we are almost tempted 
to believe that a miracle has been wrought in Florence, when 
a Friar, totally unversed in worldly matters, could succeed 
in confounding the wise, redeeming his country, and es- 
tablishing a new Republic. But, on the other hand, this 
seemed to confirm the old experience, that in great social 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 347 

emergencies one force alone is powerful to save, the pure 
and unselfish moral force of really great men, namely: fervid 
earnestness for truth, firm and steadfast aspirations after 
goodness. In Savonarola all these elements were combined 
and formed, indeed, this very essence of his noble character. 
In moments of trial what learning could compare with 
wisdom such as this? what prudence boast the victories and 
conquests such devotion could achieve?" 

For your encouragement, fellow reformers, let me add 
that this highly gifted man endured the most obnoxious 
treatment and was burned at the stake, yet his statue in 
bronze now stands in Florence on the site of his scaffold, and 
his name is honoured throughout Europe as one of the promo- 
ters of human liberty. 

Long before Savonarola, there lived another illustrious 
Italian, Dante Alighieri, so famous in the world of letters 
that his fame as a statesman is sometimes overlooked. Dante 
was a civil service reformer who devoted his early years 
to the public service. By joining one of the guilds, an act 
then prerequisite to the holding of a public office, he became, 
a little later, a commissioner of public works and superin- 
tended the widening and improvement of certain streets in 
Florence. I can believe that Mr. Lowell or Mr. Gilder 
would have gladly rendered kindred services in Boston or 
New York, if there had been any possibility of their selection, 
while I admit that, as a general rule, the measures of well- 
trained engineers are more desirable than the metres of the 
most accomplished versifiers. 

The second aphorism is this, that lofty ideals must be 
upheld. Those who are called upon to frame laws or pass 
them must study, in the light of experience, the art of gov- 
ernment as did the founders of this republic who, with 
limited apparatus, without such libraries as we possess, fer- 
reted out the records of ancient states. " The Spirit of the 
Laws " by Montesquieu was a favourite book with them, and 



348 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

the student of politics might do worse than to recur to his 
pages even now, though Thirlwall and Grote, and Momm- 
sen and Sismondi stand on the library shelf and the 
" Federalist " is in the student's hands. But historians are 
not the only teachers. The publicists, Bluntschli, Lieber, 
Gladstone, Tocqueville and Bryce have their lessons for us. 
Emphatically let me say that the idealist must be consulted, — 
those seers whose lofty conceptions of what mankind should 
strive after, began with the earliest of Grecians and were con- 
tinued by Plato and Aristotle and a long line of bright men, 
down to the authors of the " Utopia," " Oceana," " Tele- 
maque " and the " Persian Letters." The practical politician 
is prone to think that he has no use for the idealist, but 
if he will turn to the pages of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, 
he will find in a compact form a defence of idealism in politics 
which has its parallel in Sylvester's assertion of the value of 
imagination in science, especially in mathematical science. 
If we consider all the great items of political progress, says 
this far-sighted statesman, such as the introduction of monog- 
amy, of the abolition of slavery, of the liberty of the press, 
of religious toleration, of permanent embassies, of a standing 
army, of a government post office or of a civil police, we shall 
find that every one of these measures must, when it was newly 
introduced, have been conceived of by its author as an ideal 
scheme. 

The third aphorism is this. While it is important to be 
aggressive, it is imperative to be patient. The public at large 
are slow to follow the leadership of the most wise and most 
thoughtful members of the community. No statistics enable 
us to speak with mathematical precision, but it is safe to esti- 
mate that it takes a period of from thirty to fifty years, let us 
say the time of one generation, to secure the popular ap- 
proval of matters of minor importance, while to establish 
greater principles a longer period is usually involved. It is 
encouraging to know that good ideas have extraordinary 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 349 

vitality ; they may slumber for decades or centuries, but once 
embodied in laws and institutions they are; like the bread 
cast upon the waters, found after many days. Perseverance 
in a good cause is just as important as those alluring quali- 
ties, combativeness and suggestiveness. 

Anyone who has followed the discussions of this League 
in this and former years, must be aware that the members 
do not consider that their task is done. Encouraged by 
the progress that has been made, enlightened by the efforts 
which have led to victory, they look for early and great im- 
provements in many directions, for example, in the consular 
system and in the subordinate posts of the diplomatic service. 
They are. striving for improvement in municipal government. 
They seek to persuade the public that no appointment should 
be made in educational or philanthropic establishments except 
on the grounds of fitness, training and experience. The task 
of reformers will never be done, so long as human nature 
is what it is, — but society will ever be advancing toward the 
perfection which seems beyond its reach. 

Among the many eminent foreigners who have been among 
us during the St. Louis Exposition and during the Presi- 
dential campaign, there are three whose reflections are awaited 
eagerly. I refer to the Archbishop of Canterbury, a student 
of ecclesiastical and religious conditions, to the biographer 
of Gladstone and to the author of " The American Common- 
wealth," observers of political and social affairs. One of 
them, Mr. Morley, in his speech at Pittsburg, has given us an 
indication of what we may expect from him. After speaking 
of " the question of questions," whether moral forces keep 
pace with material forces in the world of which this con- 
tinent, conspicuous before all others, bears such astounding 
evidence, he says there is many a sign of progress beyond mis- 
take. " The practice of associated action, one of the many 
keys of progress, is a new force in a hundred fields, and with 
immeasurable diversity of forms. There is less acquiescence 






350 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

in triumphant wrong. Toleration in religion has been called 
the best fruit of the last four centuries, and in spite of the 
few bigoted survivals, even in our United Kingdom, and 
some savage outbreaks of hatred, half religious, half racial, 
on the Continent of Europe, this glorious gain of time may 
now be taken as secured. Perhaps of all the contributions of 
America to human civilisation this is the greatest. The 
reign of force is not yet over, and at intervals it has its 
triumphant hours, but reason, justice, humanity fight with 
success their long and steady battle for a wider sway." 

Surely, with these encouraging reflections, we may press 
forward in the work upon which we are engaged. 



SPECIAL TRAINING FOR SPECIAL 
WORK IN PHILANTHROPY 



SPECIAL TRAINING FOR SPECIAL WORK 

In the winter of 1904, John S. Kennedy, Esq., of 
New York, gave a large fund to the Charity Organ- 
isation Society of New York in order to promote and 
develop the idea of instruction in Philanthropy. At 
the Annual Meeting of that Society, held on January 
*7> x 9 5> tne following address was delivered. 



XXI 

SPECIAL TRAINING FOR PHILANTHROPIC WORK 

The occasion which has brought us together is fine, fine 
among all the religious and philanthropic reunions of this 
metropolis, fine like gold among the useful and precious 
metals. Added to the ordinary themes of such an anniver- 
sary, we have to-day the freshness of a new problem, namely, 
the potentialities of systematic training in the conduct of 
charities, or as the cards of invitation have expressed it, 
" special training for social work." John Ruskin once said 
in his poetical prose, " Charity is wound with white roses 
which burst as they open into flames of fire," and I choose to 
suppose that he meant, in ordinary parlance, " Simple deeds 
of charity often develop with unexpected brilliancy." An un- 
expected and munificent act now claims our attention, one 
which has burst like " a flame of fire " upon the unobtrusive 
work of friendly visitors among the poor, not only in Man- 
hattan, but in other places where the seeds of systematic 
charity are planted. A large-minded and large-hearted man, 
John S. Kennedy, who provided not long ago a building for 
four co-operative charities, has given a fund to maintain the 
agencies by which workers in various departments of humani- 
tarian effort may be prepared for their duties, by guidance, in- 
struction, and inspiration. In distant places as well as in 
this city his bounty has been recognised as wise, timely and 
far-sighted, freighted with great possibilities, laden with 
great expectations. It has been received with the heartiest 
gratitude. 

The circumstances of this gift are well known. For 
several years a summer school in charitable work has been 

353 



354 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

maintained in this city under the skilful superintendence of 
Dr. Philip W. Ayres. From this nucleus the New York 
School of Philanthropy is now developed, thanks in a great 
degree to Mr. Kennedy, and to the president of this society, 
Robert W. de Forest. A large staff of instructors is en- 
listed, under whom a goodly company of students are en- 
rolled for the scholastic year, and many more are coming in 
the summer. Get the " Hand Book of the School of Philan- 
thropy " and be surprised, as I have been, by the variety of 
courses already offered, their adaptation to the present wants 
of the country, and the number of experts engaged as leaders 
and guides, under the direction of Dr. Devine, Mr. Johnson 
and Mrs. Spencer. 

Other antecedents should be brought to mind, imprimis the 
excellent and suggestive initiative of Frank B. Sanborn at 
Cornell University, in the administration of President White. 
The informal classes in the Johns Hopkins University, 
fathered by Herbert B. Adams, and quickened by the en- 
thusiasm of that rarely gifted man, the late John Glenn, 
should not be forgotten, for they had not a little influence 
upon such remarkably influential characters as Amos G. 
Warner, John H. Finlay, Albert Shaw, E. R. L. Gould, 
Jeffrey R. Brackett, John M. Glenn, P. W. Ayres, Miss 
Richmond and Mrs. Glenn. The classes in Hartford, Con- 
necticut, and the highly organised work in the University of 
Chicago under Professor Henderson are memorable. Among 
the most important of all such agencies is the Training School 
for Social Workers under the auspices of Harvard University 
and Simmons College. To Boston, the shining focus of 
charity and knowledge, Dr. Brackett, one of the wisest of 
American experts in the domain of charitable relief, has been 
called away from three important stations which he held in 
Baltimore, and is now inaugurating organised instruction 
in the various branches of charitable effort. Now New 
York comes to the front, larger, richer, more venturesome 



PHILANTHROPIC WORK 355 

than any other city. The building was here, the leaders, 
the scholars, the ideas, the organisation. " Wanting was 
what ? " Endowment ! So endowment enters the field, bear- 
ing a letter which is a sort of charter, a bill, not of rights, but 
of duties, a summary of principles. If you have not read it, 
get a copy and be instructed by Mr. Kennedy's conception of 
the School of Philanthropy. Observe three points in his 
letter: 

1. His gift is not an impulse, nor an answer to an appeal, 
but is the fruit of scrutiny — scrutiny of the work performed 
in New York during the last seven years. 

2. Remark the emphasis laid by this benefactor upon the 
spirit of co-operation with the educational and philanthropic 
institutions of this city, already fostered by the incorporation 
of the United Charities. 

3. Read and remember this dictum. Mr. Kennedy says: 

There is the same need for knowledge and experience in relieving 
the complex disabilities of poverty that there is in relieving mere 
ailments of the body, and the same process of evolution that has 
brought into our hospital service the trained physician and the 
trained nurse, increasingly calls for the trained charity worker. 

This one sentence comprises a volume. It might serve 
as a motto, to be repeated over and over again. 

Two pithy sayings of Ralph Waldo Emerson have occurred 
to me as this gift has been considered. One of them is this: 
" A new degree of intellectual power seems cheap at any 
price," and the other is this : " Nothing great was ever 
achieved without enthusiasm." With enthusiasm, therefore, 
we are to consider the potentiality of training in the field of 
philanthropy, and the attainment of a new degree of in- 
tellectual power. 

One word of caution to the outside world. Hands off! 
Let not these schools of philanthropy be multiplied too 
rapidly. Those now established are quite enough for fm- 



356 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

mediate wants, certainly in the Atlantic States. Let them 
be built up before rival or imitative beginnings are made else- 
where; let the fruitage come before cuttings are planted. 

If there are any in this assemblage sceptical in respect to 
the objects of this foundation, let me ask them to bear in 
mind some general principles. 

Modern society makes much use of three factors, indeed, 
all progress depends upon them. These are they: Co- 
operation, investigation and education. Do you shun the 
words that end in -tion? Then take these: Union, 
knowledge and training — and consider what they involve. 

Begin with Union. By a few examples be reminded of 
this idea, that combination is the note of our times. In the 
political world you may bring to mind the opposition to dis- 
union in the United States of America, and in the United 
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; you may recall the 
union of Austria and Hungary ; the resurgence of new Italy ; 
and the restitution of the German Empire. Efforts for re- 
union among the Christian churches are widely supported. 
See how Greater New York has been constituted. Notice 
the organisations of capital and labour. Tell me, is not as- 
sociation the watchword of the twentieth century? Among 
objects near at hand, the fruits of seeds planted long ago, 
may we not look for the early ripening of religious brother- 
hood, united charities, and international justice? Webster's 
ringing phrase comprehends it all, " Liberty and Union, one 
and inseparable, now and forever." 

Next consider Knowledge. I use this word, and not 
science (though they mean pretty much the same), because 
for some reason science has not been a popular word. It has 
suggested to the non-scientific mind abstract mathematics, 
astronomical tables, lists of fishes, insects, birds, beasts and 
plants, the artificial nomenclature of minerals and rocks and 
the still more unpronounceable terminology of modern 
chemistry. Applied to charity, science has seemed abstract, 



PHILANTHROPIC WORK 357 

impractical, cold, and distant, far removed from sentiment 
and affection, and even from humanity and good will. But 
when science is seen to be the summary of man's observation 
and experience no thoughtful person can question its value. 
" What has been found out? " or " What do we know? " or 
" What are the facts? " are the queries with which researches 
should begin. Knowledge is the starting point of all good 
actions. Accurate information was sought by the ancient 
Babylonians and the golden rule was recognised in remote 
antiquity, but the notion that Science and Philanthropy 
could be wedded and made co-operative is a modern thought. 
Even now, there are many charitable and intelligent persons 
who do not comprehend what this union signifies. They 
prefer to be governed by impulse rather than by prin- 
ciples; sentiment, not wisdom. Yet the number is con- 
stantly increasing throughout all civilised lands of those 
who would discover, if possible, wise methods of preven- 
tion and remedy. These are they who would infuse 
sympathy with knowledge; who would ascertain facts as 
the basis for appropriate action. These are they who rec- 
ognise such a field of inquiry as social pathology, the ascer- 
tainment of the nature and causes of social disorders and 
decay, so that relief appropriate to individual cases may be 
discovered and applied. What sort of a doctor would he 
be who trusted to sentiment and not to knowledge and 
skill ? He would be a hoodoo. 

Remedies have already been discovered for many evils; 
modes of prevention have been ascertained; the means of ap- 
plying this knowledge to individuals, and to communities, 
have been sought out, and there is abundant inquiry in prog- 
ress as to the treatment of the social cancers and in- 
numerable ills which prey upon humanity. Legislation has 
come to the service of philanthropy. In fact, philanthropy 
appears to be going through the experiences of other sciences. 
Recount the advance of medicine — kind impulses, obvious re- 



358 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

lief, traditional experience, accurate records, comparison of 
treatment, accepted principles, systematic investigation, the 
abolition of certain diseases, the control of others, the lessen- 
ing of minor ailments, the prolongation of life, and often, 
Euthanasia. 

Likewise charity begins with pity and sympathy, leads on 
to " oil and wine," proceeds to discover the causes of dis- 
tress, investigates cases, applies permanent relief, and, by 
judicious help, counsel and restrictions, restores the individ- 
ual to health, moral as well as physical, while it enables so- 
ciety to frame such laws and apply such methods as will re- 
duce, if not abolish, many evil tendencies and correct many 
evils. 

I come in the third place to the subject of Training. 
Modern society is so complex that in every pursuit some de- 
gree of preparation is requisite, and this preparation must not 
only be general, based upon a broad acquaintance with the 
subject in hand; it must be adapted, as near as may be, to 
particular callings. Recurring again to the medical parallel 
of our charter, remember that in colonial days, the same 
man had the cure of souls and the cure of bodies, like the 
famous Jared Eliot of Connecticut. By and by, preaching 
and practice were separated. Then the good physician was 
an all-around man, willing to amputate a leg or dispense the 
medicament of Paracelsus, elixir proprietatis. Specialisation 
at length separated surgery from medicine. Presently all 
branches of surgery were too much for one man, and the ocu- 
list, the aurist, the gynecologist, received special training. 
Medicine called for consultants as well as practitioners. 
Again, the distinction was made between the physician on the 
one hand who is devoted only to science, the anatomist, the 
physiologist, and the pathologist, and on the other the phy- 
sician who is in constant attendance upon the sick. Nursing 
after Florence Nightingale became a most important cult. 
Different kinds of nurses are now called for. All this il- 



PHILANTHROPIC WORK 359 

lustrates the doctrine that following special aptitudes, special 
training for special callings is the demand of modern society. 
Only be it remembered special training should always be 
based upon education as broad and solid as the circumstances 
of the individual can secure. 

Apply these illustrations to philanthropic work. Evidently 
there are two classes of workers to be trained — those who 
can give all their time to the public good, and those who 
exercise charity incidentally, but not exclusively. Some of 
those who devote themselves to the dispensation of charity 
as a career may rise to stations of importance, may be over- 
seers of the poor, secretaries of charity societies, superin- 
tendents of refuges and asylums, students and writers, per- 
haps teachers and lecturers. Others will be contented 
with the equally honourable but less conspicuous work of 
friendly visitors among the poor and needy, or perchance, 
municipal or State advisers and trustees of beneficent 
institutions. 

A private letter sums up the situation with such felicity 
that I will ask leave to read it. After visiting certain classes 
in the Boston school of philanthropy, my friend 1 writes thus : 

I saw there a fine lot of bright young men and women eager 
to learn. Some were looking to being paid workers, others to 
being volunteers. I felt that the greatest value of the school was 
in the spirit it inspired. Its object is to teach people to be good 
citizens, to work for the benefit of the community. The object 
of everything taught is the helping of others. The students are 
not studying in order to benefit themselves. And they are being 
trained to work in social matters with care and thought. If any 
choose not to follow in the special lines treated at the school, the 
point of view gained will be most helpful to them and to the 
community in whatever direction their energy is directed. So 
we may hope that the influence of these schools will radiate far 
beyond the limited field of charities, correction, settlements, and 
the like. 

ijohn M. Glenn. 



3 6o THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

Another element in the training of prime value is that it gives 
the student a general but clear view of the whole field before 
taking up any special line of work. So when he approaches a 
family in distress he is prepared to look for all the weak spots and 
to prescribe proper remedies of various kinds, material, moral and 
spiritual, to cure various and varying needs. 

I mention these points because they have not, apparently, had 
much stress laid on them. 

During the nineteenth century, what is called higher 
education as distinguished from elementary has in this coun- 
try at least, in accordance with the principles of evolution, 
developed from the simple to the complex. It was not until 
the nineteenth century began that there were among us any 
schools of medicine, law and theology. About the middle 
of the century technological and scientific schools were es- 
tablished. These were soon subdivided, and courses for 
chemists, architects, engineers, miners were provided. A 
little later came training for biologists, physicists, psychol- 
ogists, historians, economists. Simultaneously schools have 
been established for many varieties of manual industry. Re- 
cently came schools for nurses. The youngest child of Ed- 
ucation is now in his cradle, and is christened Philanthropy. 
What will this child be and do when he reaches maturity? 
The question cannot be answered. Yet human experience 
shows that good ideas never die; they expand. They may 
be dormant like grains of wheat enwrapped in mummy 
cloths, or hidden, like bread cast upon the overflow of the 
Nile — but the vitality continues. However, some predictions 
may be hazarded. 

A large number of students will be enrolled as soon as 
the opportunities and advantages are understood. This goes 
without saying. Probably very few to begin with will follow 
one prescribed course. The attendants are likely to have 
special needs and the administration will endeavour to satisfy 
the wants of individuals, rather than to form a few classes 
following a curriculum. There will certainly be many 



PHILANTHROPIC WORK 361 

lectures addressed to audiences as large as this room will 
contain. 

This school will enlarge its special library of books that 
embody the experience of mankind in all departments of 
social activity. It will include the manuals of active or- 
ganisations, reports, statistics, addresses. There will be his- 
tories of municipalities and states. Walpole's " History of 
England " will be bought for the one chapter on the results of 
English reform. There will be biographies of the immor- 
tals, illustrious benefactors of society, martyrs and saints of 
the ancient world, reformers and enthusiasts of the Middle 
Ages. St. Vincent de Paul and Francke of Halle will stand 
side by side with more recent leaders in philanthropy from 
John Howard to Lord Shaftesbury, from Count Rumford 
to Montefiore. The works of moralists and promoters of 
ethical culture, like Maurice, Davies, Lyman Abbott, West- 
cott, Tucker and Hodges, will be in the library. Econo- 
mists and statisticians will not be omitted. The studies of 
the liquor problem by the Committee of Fifty, reports on 
crime and punishment, from Francis Lieber to Charlton T. 
Lewis, the year books of Josiah Strong and Robert Hunter's 
study of millions of the poverty-stricken are sure to be re- 
membered. Philosophers will be represented from the an- 
cient Greeks to Herbert Spencer ; and historians, like John T. 
Merz, who has recently written a remarkable book on 
" European Thought in the Nineteenth Century." There 
will be a shelf of choice books, bound with gilt edges, works of 
the idealists, those torch bearers who peer into the dark- 
ness and awaken our imaginations, followers of Plato and our 
own contemporaries. A catalogue raisonnee, something 
more than lists, something less than reviews, should be pre- 
pared for ready reference. It would have a wide circula- 
tion beyond the library room. 

Not long ago I asked the librarian of one hundred thou- 
sand books, how many of them were on the subject of phil- 



362 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

anthropy. Possibly fifty, was his reply. Five thousand 
should have been the number. Ten thousand should be col- 
lected for this new school. 

With such nitrogenous stimulus, we shall, perhaps, ere 
long have a series of new and timely publications. Our 
excellent journal Charities, interesting and indispensable, will 
henceforth be more valuable than ever. It will be a record 
of progress at home and abroad. If Americans have made 
no such study as that of Charles Booth in London, we have 
many capital contributions, made by our colleagues and 
associates, to this branch of literature. The " Gesta Christi " 
of Charles L. Brace is one such book; the memoir of Dr. S. 
G. Howe another. Remember the prison studies of Dr. 
Wines. Indispensable are the social statistics of the census, 
the encyclopaedias of Lalor and of Henderson. The writ- 
ings of Miss Richmond, Mrs. Glenn, Dr. Devine are not 
likely to be forgotten. You must allow me, Mr. President, 
to name your masterly presentation of the tenement-house 
problem as a most important contribution to the welfare of 
large cities. No wonder that Yale, your alma mater, gave 
you its highest honours when that great work appeared. 

Nevertheless, books will not be the chief instructors in 
this School of Philanthropy. As the students of physical 
science and natural history learn from observation and ex- 
periment, our students must be taught by kindred agencies. 
I need hardly remind this audience that New York is re- 
dundant with object lessons. It is both a museum and a 
laboratory. The most varied and complex conditions of 
society are here rooted. All the nations of the world have 
entered their exiles, with their peculiar virtues and their 
peculiar habits and faults. Every form of decadence, irre- 
ligion, vice, disorder, crime, shiftiness, insanitation may 
be discovered. Captains of intemperance and immorality 
are leading regiments through sensuality, penury and sloth 
to the almshouse, the hospital, and the gaol. 



PHILANTHROPIC WORK 363 

Thank God, that is but half the story. Here also the 
ranks are full of wise, generous, ingenious, self-sacrificing 
and devoted men and women, who are thwarting the down- 
ward tendencies, uplifting the fallen, recovering the dissolute, 
relieving the distressed, bringing back wanderers to the paths 
of thrift and virtue, or, to sum it up in the Master's words, 
" Restoring sight to the blind." v 

Here to-day schools, night schools, sewing schools, man- 
ual labour schools, Carnegie libraries, reading-rooms, pop- 
ular lectures, cathedrals, churches, temples, gospel missions, 
are multiplied on a most liberal scale, adapted to all ages, 
needs, creeds and tongues. These we may call prophylactic 
agencies, corrective of bad tendencies, bad habits and bad 
tastes. Moreover, there are in active operation all forms 
of relief, civic, churchly, associated, individual, fraternal, 
racial, national. Neighbourhood settlements are numerous. 
The children, the aged, the sick, the injured, the deficients, 
the crippled, all have their benefactors. Reformatory, pen- 
itential and disciplinary establishments are manifold, nor 
should we forget that the higher institutions of learning 
have able professors and lecturers who are bringing the ex- 
perience of past ages and of distant lands to the service of 
this place and these days. Wise methods and bad methods 
are exemplified. Blunders, mistakes, limitations, extrava- 
gances, inexperiences may be pointed out, — and still easier 
is it to show examples of economical, judicious and highly 
successful administration. The best modes of securing 
assistance from those who can give money, and from those 
who can give time, may be studied. By lessons based on 
such observations, these scholars may be taught. 

Yet all these acquisitions will be dry and fruitless, unless 
with observation and experience inspiration is enlisted as 
another teacher. Fortunate will those be who become in- 
spired by that great body of philanthropists now at work 
among the unfortunate and the lowly. The long calendar 



364 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

of those who have been canonised in Rome may be matched 
by a calendar of brothers and sisters now vigilant and help- 
ful in the boroughs of New York. They may or may not 
be marked by their garb, but day after day, we meet, often 
without recognition, the Hebrew, Catholic and Protestant 
Sisters of Charity and the Brothers of Misericordia. 

This review reminds me of a great ecclesiastical pageant 
which I witnessed under the dome of St. Peter's in Rome, 
rtot long ago. Two saints were canonised, both of them ex- 
amples of the modern well-deserved recognition of charity 
and of training. Santa Rita was a good woman who lived 
in a country town several centuries ago, and performed the 
very duties which belong in our modern phraseology, to the 
friendly visitors among the poor; and the other was Jean 
Baptist La Salle, founder of the Christian Brothers, wise 
advocate of the importance of training in the field of 
education. 
S Obviously, a school of philanthropy has its obligations far 
beyond the library and classroom. It must teach the public. 
This may be by public meetings, addresses, tracts, conferences, 
social gatherings, conversations, — all the manifold agencies 
by which public opinion is formed. May I be allowed to 
speak of Baltimore ? One of the greatest conflagrations in our 
history occurred not quite a year ago. How did the com- 
munity act in this hour of -trial, this extreme test? No cry 
of want, no disorder, no looting. The Legislature appropri- 
ated $250,000 for the needy. What happened? By our 
United Charities all wants were supplied, and less than $25,- 
000 was drawn for relief from the public chest. Wise, 
well-taught and thrifty Baltimore, — thanks, no doubt, in 
a large degree, to the discussion of the principles of relief 
which for twenty years have been inculcated by the school 
*v of John Glenn. 

One word more in conclusion, partly in repetition. The 
term, a school of philanthropy, is not always understood. 



PHILANTHROPIC WORK 365 

It is novel. It suggests nothing concrete. It sounds vis- 
ionary, impractical, needless. I have heard from wise and 
generous persons remarks like these: " Teach philanthropy? 
Not much. Philanthropy proceeds from the heart, not from 
the head. Good will to men is a religious duty, not an 
academic dogma." To these objections we may make this 
reply. It is true that active philanthropy must proceed 
from an impulse, a desire, a purpose, and a principle to help 
the forlorn and the unfortunate. Without this motive study 
is in vain. Though I give all my goods to feed the poor, 
and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Likewise, 
one might have all the knowledge that mankind has gathered 
up respecting pauperism, crime, misery and every form of 
degradation, and, in fact, be a walking encyclopaedia of 
philanthropy, yet without charity, he would be ineffective; 
he might be worthless or worse as a visitor to the poor. 
Upon this point we are all agreed. It is not open for 
discussion. 

George Peabody was not trained in any school of phil- 
anthropy, but he had a good adviser in Robert C. Winthrop 
and an object lesson in the slums of London. John Howard 
was not taught in any school of philanthropy, but how 
much more successful he would have been if he had known 
the methods of modern prison reform. Florence Nightin- 
gale was a splendid, self-impelling force, devoted to the 
service of the sick, but she would be the first to admit that 
the experience of our Sanitary Commission, of the Red Cross, 
and of our schools for nurses, would have been to her of 
priceless value. 

These are indeed exceptional examples, and it is not for 
such extraordinary characters that this school is projected. 
Nor is it planned with reference to that large and increasing 
number of wealthy men and women who are ready to con- 
tribute to the support of charitable institutions — though 
even they may learn much from the records of this institution 



366 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

concerning the merits and the demerits of establishments 
which appeal for support. 

The principal purpose of the School of Philanthropy is 
to give counsel at the beginning of their career to those who 
will seek it in respect to the conduct and administration of 
charitable institutions; and to impress the true principles of 
benevolence and beneficence upon that numerous company 
of young women and young men who are ready, in the most 
unselfish way, to do good as they have opportunity while 
engaged in other pursuits or involved in other duties. Benev- 
olence and Beneficence are a couple that should never be 
divorced. 

Our claim is this — the experiences of the charitable world 
must be accumulated, recorded, digested, and applied. 
Those who are willing to give their time or their leisure to 
the help and uplifting of the needy should be guided by the 
experience of other workers or their best endeavours may be 
thwarted. To both classes, those who will make charity a 
vocation, and those who will make it an avocation, this school 
will be of inestimable value. 

Ladies and gentlemen, let me congratulate you upon the 
opportunities before you. I bid you Godspeed in the service 
of humanity, the relief of distress, the prevention of poverty, 
the organisation of charity, and the promotion of social 
welfare. 



COLONEL JOHN EAGER HOWARD 

The Hero of Cowpens, One of the Worthies of 
Baltimore, 



The following address was delivered in Baltimore 
on the 1 6th of January, 1904. It was prepared with 
reference to its delivery in the open air, but was 
actually given, on account of the weather, in the 
neighbouring hall of the Peabody Institute. 

The occasion was the unveiling of an equestrian 
statue of Colonel Howard, erected by the contributions 
of members of the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore. 
A commemorative notice of the artist, M. Fremiet, was 
delivered on the same occasion by Mr. Julian Leroy 
White. 

Howard died October 12, 1827. 



XXII 

COLONEL JOHN EAGER HOWARD: A MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

The simple ceremony in which we are about to engage 
brings us by a designed coincidence to the base of a mon- 
ument which suggests, by its dignity and repose, the eminent 
character that it commemorates. For more than a hundred 
years the name of Washington has been honoured with un- 
questioned praise wherever our flag has gone, — and never 
in words more fit than those of Richard Henry Lee which 
every generation should repeat with gratitude, " First in 
war, First in peace, and First in the hearts of his 
countrymen." 

We are not so presumptuous as to think that any act of 
ours can add lustre to his name, nor to suppose that the art 
of sculpture, however successful it may be, can enhance the 
beauty of that column, " simple, erect, austere, sublime," 
near which we have placed the statue of another soldier of 
the Revolution. Nevertheless, it is a pleasure to associate 
with the name of Washington, the name of a Marylander 
subordinate to the great Commander, who like him fought, 
suffered, and triumphed; in war, a hero; in peace, a servant 
of the State; the patriot soldier, Colonel John Eager 
Howard. 

From the days of Cincinnatus until recent times there 
have been commanders who laid down their swords when 
strife was ended, and who engaged in the pursuits of civil 
life until called by their countrymen to renewed service in 
the councils of the government. At Annapolis, in a chamber 
which should be forever sacred as one of the shrines of 
American patriotism, Washington surrendered his com- 

369 



370 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

mission, and thence he returned, soon afterwards, to his 
home at Mt. Vernon, where he remained until the people 
made him President. In like manner, in a less conspicuous 
but not less patriotic way, Howard, after the years of 
military privation and perils were passed, found repose in 
Belvedere, his country-seat, remaining the foremost citizen 
of Baltimore until he was chosen first the Governor of 
Maryland and afterwards a Senator of the United States. 
Despondent Americans sometimes express the fear, if they 
do not suppress the hope, that from our democracy an im- 
perial monarchy will arise, and that some Caesar or Napoleon 
will assume the power of a dictator; but such a possibility, 
to us abhorrent, will never become a reality among those 
who cherish the words and the examples of Washington and 
Howard. 

In travelling through this and other lands, it is interesting 
to note the various embodiments in sculpture of popular 
affection for heroes. In Rome on the Capitoline hill stands 
one of the noblest remains of ancient art, — the statue of" 
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, — and as if stimulated by this 
remembrance, almost every city of Italy has its statues of 
Garibaldi, Cavour, and Victor Emmanuel. Near the banks 
of the Neva, Catherine the Second placed on a mass of 
granite the spirited figure of Peter the Great. In the capital 
of Prussia, Frederick the Great is honoured by one of the 
finest monuments of modern art, the superb work of Rauch. 
On the Rue de Rivoli in Paris, the very sculptor whose work 
is before us, has modelled an equestrian figure of the far- 
famed deliverer of France, the Maid of Orleans. In London, 
Nelson's column overlooks Westminster. The dome of St. 
Paul's covers the monument of the Iron Duke as the dome 
of the Invalides in Paris enshrines the remains of his antago- 
nist. There are statues of Washington in Boston, New 
York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Richmond ; lately, also, 
by the generosity of American women, in the capital of 



COLONEL JOHN EAGER HOWARD 371 

France. To one of the greatest of living sculptors we owe 
the memorials of Farragut and Sherman in New York, of 
Shaw in Boston, and of Lincoln in Chicago. The city of 
Washington has many equestrian statues. Richmond has 
its Robert E. Lee. These are but examples of the homage 
paid to wisdom, courage, and self-sacrifice, — monuments, 
often, but unfortunately not always, produced by artists of 
genius, usually if not always evoked by sentiments of the 
loftiest patriotism. 

The statue now erected in Baltimore is certainly worthy to 
be named among those already mentioned, both because of 
its distinction as a work of art by one of the foremost sculptors 
in the city of Paris, the focus of modern art, and also because 
of the man commemorated. It is a tribute of admiration and 
affection from certain members of the Municipal Art Society 
of Baltimore who cherish with gratitude the memory of 
Howard. The work of the artist, M. Fremiet, sustains his 
high reputation. The details of costume and equipment in 
the time of the Revolutionary War have been carefully re- 
produced. The attitude and expression of the hero are 
dignified and spirited. Henceforward, the citizen in his 
daily walks, the stranger as he enters the city, the student 
as he goes to the library, the children as they gather about 
the monument of Washington, will be attracted by this 
figure, and as they think of the person thus honoured, seventy- 
six years after his death, they will learn a lesson of patriot- 
ism, courage, public spirit and good citizenship. If they 
inquire, they will be told that among the men of Maryland, 
in the formative period of this nation, none served the com- 
monwealth better than the friend of Washington and La- 
fayette; the supporter of Greene; in " times that tried men's 
souls," the unflinching patriot, brave on many battle-fields; 
in the public councils, a wise and unblemished statesman; 
throughout his life the public-spirited benefactor of Baltimore. 

Howard does not stand alone among the worthies of 



372 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

Maryland commemorated by their grateful fellow-citizens. 
In the national capitol, the Legislature has placed the statues 
of John Hanson and Charles Carroll; near the state-house 
in Annapolis we are reminded of the gallantry of that great 
leader of the Maryland Line, General DeKalb. There is 
a truly speaking likeness of Chief Justice Taney in the 
statue by our own Rinehart. The figure of George Peabody 
has been placed in front of the athenaeum which he founded. 
Soon, in a public place, we shall see a representation of one 
whose departure we still mourn, whose pen still counsels, 
whose example still inspires the young men of Baltimore — 
Severn Teackle Wallis. Hereafter, others will thus be 
brought to remembrance by the sculptor's art. Among 
them, there should certainly be a tribute to the founder of 
the university and hospital which have brought so much dis- 
tinction and benefit to this city. There are other heroes of 
the Revolution, of whom we are reminded by the life and 
services of Howard, especially participants in the Southern 
campaign. General Gist, General Otho H. Williams, Gen- 
eral Smallwood, and Colonel John Gunby. 

In order that justice may be done to the career of a man 
of mark, it is necessary to consider the times in which he 
lived and the opportunities which were opened to him. If 
" all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely 
players," we must give heed to the scenes, the accessories 
and the associated characters of the drama. A great historian, 
whose graphic style fixes the attention of every reader quite 
as firmly as Macaulay's, has acknowledged his obligations 
to Shakespeare's dramatic treatment of historic events. He 
presents the stage, the actors and the deeds. For a study 
of the American Revolution, the material is superabundant. 
The story of that great series of events has been told again 
and again, not only by annalists and biographers, but by 
historians, many of whom had rare gifts of expression and 
knew how to omit the unessential from their narratives and 



COLONEL JOHN EAGER HOWARD 373 

give emphasis to important crises; therefore a few words 
only will be needed to remind you of the circumstances 
under which the character of Howard was developed. The 
pages of Lee, Marshall, Tarleton, Greene, Bancroft, Fiske, 
Trevelyan, Wilson, Doyle and recently of McCrady are 
accessible to those who wish for a closer study of the period. 
In a cursory way, it may be said that the Revolutionary 
War was fought in three regions, — north of the Potomac, 
south of the Potomac, and west of the Alleghenies. The 
engagements in the West are less vividly remembered, but 
the work of George R. Clark and his followers secured to 
the Americans the permanent possession of the Ohio valley. 
Campaigns in the North began in 1775, in eastern Massa- 
chusetts, and continued with varying results until the close 
of the war, chiefly on the seaboard and in the natural high- 
way to Canada by the Hudson River and the Lakes George 
and Champlain. The most decisive battle was fought in 
October, 1777, at Saratoga, when the British army met 
with disastrous defeat and General Burgoyne surrendered. 
The righting continued notwithstanding this victory, and the 
names of many a battlefield in New York, New Jersey, and 
Pennsylvania recall the patience and the bravery of the 
American army. The Southern campaigns began with the 
British capture of Savannah and the subsequent capture of 
Charleston and the adjacent seaboard, so that in 1780 Corn- 
wallis was ready to begin his strenuous endeavours to re- 
cover in the South the prestige which Burgoyne had lost in 
the North. His efforts were largely directed toward the 
suppression of all patriotic sentiments among the inhabitants 
of Georgia and the Carolinas. He was gradually led to 
take up his position at Yorktown, where the American and 
French forces compelled his surrender. By the defeat of 
Cornwallis the war was virtually closed, and the inde- 
pendence of the United Colonies, proclaimed five years be- 
fore, was secured. 



374 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

Such was the drama of the Revolution. Let us now see 
the entrance upon the stage of Howard, the man whom we 
are assembled to honour. 

When the gales, foretold by Patrick Henry, in words 
that every schoolboy used to know by heart, had swept from 
the North and brought to the listening ears of anxious 
Southerners the clash of resounding arms, Maryland was 
ready to do her part in support of the principles of inde- 
pendence. Among the earliest to enlist was James Mc- 
Henry, who began as an army surgeon and who rose by his 
merits to the post of Secretary of War under Washington 
and Adams. His monument is Fort McHenry, in the har- 
bour, over which the Star Spangled Banner " still waved " 
on a memorable morning in 1814. 

Another young man, then twenty-four years old, of good 
family and education, living in circumstances of comfort if 
not of affluence, in Baltimore County, joined the army, in 
1776. Even two years earlier, in November, 1774, he had 
taken part in those patriotic proceedings of the people of 
Maryland which established the principle of independence. 
He was offered the commission of a colonel, but with the 
modesty which characterised his life, he declined the re- 
sponsibility of that position and instead of it accepted the 
commission of a captain, in what was called " the flying 
camp," commanded by Colonel J. Carvel Hall. In two 
days Captain John Eager Howard had recruited a company 
and with it he marched toward the scene of action in the 
North, where his services began in the battle of White Plains. 
Shortly afterwards his corps was dismissed, and the captain 
was promoted to be a major in one of the battalions of the 
line, then enlisted by Congress for the war. The " Mary- 
land Line " having completed its organisation in the spring 
of 1777, Howard, with his command, joined the army in 
New Jersey and remained with it until his father's death 
compelled a return to Baltimore. After a short respite, he 



COLONEL JOHN EAGER HOWARD 375 

went back to his post and took part in the battle of Ger- 
mantown, where Maryland troops formed a considerable 
part of Sullivan's division on the right of the army. As 
the colonel of his regiment was disabled the command of it 
devolved upon Howard. It is an oft-noted coincidence that 
the house of Chief Justice Chew, which proved to be a castle 
for the British commander, a temporary fortress, as it was 
called, was the summer residence of the future Mrs. Howard. 
The Americans were unsuccessful, chiefly because a dense 
fog hung over the region and prevented the transmission of 
orders and the concentration of effort. There is extant a 
vivid account of this battle, written by Colonel Howard, 
which distinctly shows the brave and determined action of 
his regiment. The battle of Monmouth followed and with 
it closes the first chapter of Howard's experience. 

The second chapter is more eventful. The troops of 
Maryland and Delaware were ordered to the relief of 
Charleston, and Howard, then lieutenant-colonel of the 
Fifth Maryland Regiment in the army of the United States, 
prepared to go with them. Several hotly contested battles 
were fought with alternating defeats and victories, Corn- 
wallis trying to secure complete control of the Carolinas, 
before carrying the war into Virginia. The result was 
Yorktown. 

The country traversed by the contending forces includes 
the States of Georgia, North and South Carolina, and a part 
of Southern Virginia. It lies east of the mountains and 
descends from a piedmont or plateau region to the seaboard, 
where the harbours already named attracted the enemy. The 
tract is crossed by many streams, flowing to the ocean in a 
southeasterly direction and easily crossed by fords in their 
upper courses. In this region, besides the cities of the coast, 
the strategic points were Camden, Augusta, and Ninety- 
Six, where important roads converged. The inhabitants of 
this country were not of one mind. Many of them were 



376 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

loyal to the crown ; more espoused the cause of independence 
and liberty; some were on both sides, — according to the 
fortunes of war. Indeed, the campaigns had many of the 
saddest characteristics of a civil war. In this up-river 
country there were marches and counter-marches of the 
hostile forces leading to engagements which were severe but 
not decisive. 

Two foreigners who took part in the Southern campaign 
are worthy of remembrance here and now, Pulaski and De- 
Kalb, the Pole and the German. One fell in the siege of 
Savannah, one in the battle of Camden; both deserve our 
grateful homage. DeKalb brought the prestige of one who 
had been trained in the best of European schools, — an 
Alsatian, who had been a brigadier in the French army, had 
been encouraged by Franklin and Silas Deane to join the 
American forces, and had been intrusted by Washington with 
important commands. A little imagination will suggest the 
impression made by this famous soldier upon the young 
men of Maryland. 

There is a contemporary account of the campaigns of 
1 7 80- 1 so short that none need pass it by, so trustworthy 
that all may accept it. It comes from the pen of one of 
the best writers and one of the greatest statesmen of the 
period, — James Madison, then recently graduated from 
Princeton College and afterwards President of the United 
States. 

With the ultimate victory, it is well to bring into contrast 
the previous desperation. When Greene had been in com- 
mand about six weeks, eight days before Cowpens, he was 
so dismayed that he wrote these words : " The wants of 
this army are so numerous and various that the shortest way 
of telling you is to inform you that we have nothing. We 
are living upon charity and subsist by daily collections." 
There had been a series of changes and misfortunes. Pulaski 
was killed at Savannah, Lincoln had been succeeded by De- 



COLONEL JOHN EAGER HOWARD 377 

Kalb, DeKalb had given way to Gates, the hero of Saratoga, 
and Gates gave way to Greene. 

The campaigns in the interior begin with the battle of 
Camden, in the northern part of South Carolina, where 
Gates met Cornwallis. It is no pleasure to recall that battle, 
for in it the Americans were wofully beaten. One historian 
says: "Never was victory more complete or defeat more 
total " ; too strong a statement, for, although the Americans 
were driven back after a bloody encounter, the enemy was 
not equal to pursuit. We have also the satisfaction of know- 
ing that the Maryland soldiers were not wanting in discipline 
and courage. 

Soon followed the battle of King's Mountain (October 
7, 1780), when the tide turned. Major Ferguson had been 
sent by Cornwallis to scour the western part of South Car- 
olina and join him at Charlotte, N. C. This brilliant 
partisan leader was pursued by a body of patriot forces, ir- 
regular but determined, who found him posted on King's 
Mountain. Here Ferguson, after a desperate resistance, was 
completely routed and he fell at the head of his regulars, 
shot by seven bullets. By this brilliant victory the Americans 
made up for their defeat at Camden. 

Upon the third engagement I ask you to dwell, partly 
because of its great importance, partly because in it the 
Baltimore colonel won his greatest distinction, — the battle 
of Cowpens. In the northwest corner of South Carolina, 
near the boundary line, the opposing forces met at a place 
then called Hannah's Cow Pens, — part of a grazing estab- 
lishment belonging to a man named Hannah. 

Tarleton, the lieutenant of Cornwallis, and the subsequent 
historian of his Southern campaigns, commanded the British, 
and Morgan, brave General Daniel Morgan of Saratoga 
fame, was the lieutenant of General Greene. Many valiant 
men were there assembled. Morgan was splendid in his 
courage, wisdom, reputation, and patriotism. So was Wil- 



378 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

Ham Washington, kinsman of the Father of his country, a 
gallant leader of the cavalry. A little boy of fourteen saw 
the battle, — one who became the hero of New Orleans, Gen- 
eral Andrew Jackson. The grandfather of Edwin Warfield, 
now Governor of Maryland, commanded a company. The 
fight continued but a short time. While it lasted, it was 
fierce. Howard, with his regiment of Marylanders, held the 
key to the situation and they took good care that the lock 
should not be forced by the soldiers of George the Third. 
The Maryland colonel proved himself equal to his oppor- 
tunity. A moment's hesitation, a timid advance, a half- 
hearted leader might have lost everything. But Howard 
was quick to think, bold in action, inspiring as a leader. 
He won the battle, and it was won by the use of that formid- 
able weapon, — the bayonet. The report of the commanding 
officer, General Greene, tells the story tersely. At a critical 
moment, he says, when the British were pressing hard upon 
the Americans, " Colonel Howard, observing this, gave 
orders to charge bayonets, which was done with such address 
that the enemy fled with the utmost precipitation and aban- 
doned their artillery." Although afterwards freely employed 
by the Maryland line, we have the authority of Henry Lee 
for the statement that " at Cowpens the bayonet was first 
resorted to in the war " ; and that of Morgan, the com- 
manding officer, for saying that when the enemy showed 
signs of disorder, it was Colonel Howard who " gave orders 
for the line to charge bayonets, which was done with such 
address that the enemy fled with utmost precipitation. At 
the close of the engagement the swords of seven British 
officers were in the hands of Howard." 

All the historians are agreed upon the importance of this 
engagement. It is characterised by Bancroft as the most 
astonishing victory of the war, and by Fiske in words of 
equal weight, as the most brilliant battle of the War 
of Independence. Congress was delighted. After days of 



COLONEL JOHN EAGER HOWARD 379 

cloud and hurricane, sunshine had appeared. Courage and 
hope took the place of anxiety. Without delay, as an ex- 
pression of gratitude, a gold medal was voted to Morgan and 
silver medals to William Washington and Howard. I hold 
before you the original Howard medal. On the obverse, a 
mounted horseman galloping forward, follows the flag of 
his country, while the angel of victory hovers near, ready 
to bestow a wreath of laurels. The inscriptions are in 
Latin. On one side it reads, — To John Eager Howard, 
leader of the infantry, — (thus in contrast with the medal 
given to William Washington as leader of the cavalry;) 
and on the reverse it declares that the medal is bestowed 
upon the recipient because he gave a brilliant example of 
military valour by his sudden attack upon the enemy, in 
the battle of Cowpens, January 17, 1781. There is good 
authority for saying that the French Academy was requested 
to furnish a design for this medal, and that its skilful ex- 
ecution is the work of the artist Duvivier. A replica of 
the medal I will ask Governor Warfleld to accept as a 
memento of this celebration and also of the victory in which 
his ancestor took part. 

Three months after the engagement at the Cowpens, the 
contending forces met again at Guilford Court House, 
where Marylanders of our day have placed a monument to 
commemorate the valour of their countrymen. The story 
has been recently told by those who are well qualified 
to do justice to the bravery there displayed on the 15th of 
March, 1781. Howard and Gunby led the first Maryland 
Regiment, again using the bayonet. Although Greene left 
the battlefield in British possession, the battle of Guilford 
"marks the end of British power in North Carolina." So 
says Bancroft. Fiske is even more explicit. " Guilford, 
tactically a defeat, strategetically a decisive victory, the most 
important since the capture of Burgoyne." A British his- 
torian truly says that the victory was so fruitless and the 



3 8o THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

losses so severe that the battle may be considered " as the 
first step in a series of movements which terminated in the 
overthrow of the British power in America." 

Six weeks later the armies met again (April 25), at 
Hobkirk's Hill, two miles from Camden, so that the engage- 
ment has been called the second battle of Camden. Again 
the British gained the field but they did not hold it, and the 
commander, Lord Rawdon, retired toward Charleston. 

In the early autumn the battle of Eutaw Springs was 
fought (September 8). 'General Greene, following the 
enemy, came upon them under Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart, 
about sixty miles from Charleston. Two severe engage- 
ments ensued with heavy losses on both sides, the Americans 
at first successful, then the British. As had happened before, 
the invaders retreated toward their base at Charleston, where 
they were shut up until the end came. General Greene's 
tribute to the Maryland line is this: 

" Nothing could exceed the gallantry of the Maryland 
line. Colonels Williams, Howard, and all the officers ex- 
hibited acts of uncommon bravery; and the free use of the 
bayonet gave us the victory. Many brave fellows have 
fallen, and a great number of officers are wounded. Among 
the number is Lieutenant-Colonel Howard. The Maryland 
line made a charge that exceeded anything I ever saw. But, 
alas! their ranks are thin, and their officers are few." 

The wound in the shoulder which Howard received in 
this battle was so severe that he was compelled to go home 
for surgical treatment, and thus he was unable to take part 
in the final scenes of the drama. The curtain fell when the 
combined armies of the North and South, with the aid of 
the fleet met Cornwallis on the historic peninsula between 
the York and the James, and the War of Independence was 
over. 

Fighting ended, peace declared, the troops disbanded, 
Howard remained on his ancestral property in Baltimore, — 



COLONEL JOHN EAGER HOWARD 381 

a town of possibly twenty thousand inhabitants, quite 
eclipsed in dignity by the capital, Annapolis. Although 
we have no such picture of colonial life in Baltimore as that 
which is given respecting Albany, by Mrs. Grant, in her 
Letters, — Mr. John P. Kennedy, in his address on " Balti- 
more long ago," gives a picture of the place not far from 
the year 1800. William Wirt, as late as 1822, describes 
the Washington monument as " indescribably striking from 
the touching solitude of the scene from which it lifts its 
head." Overlooking a rapid water course (which might 
have been "a joy forever" instead of a cloaca maxima), 
stood Belvedere, a spacious mansion surrounded by a wooded 
park, which extended from Jones's Falls beyond the site of 
the monument on the south, and beyond Howard Street on 
the west. Here was Howard's home during the later years 
of his life. 1 Here he received his neighbours and friends, as 
well as his companions in arms, who were passing through 
town on the great highway between the South and the North. 
Lafayette was the most distinguished of them all after 
Washington. The veteran of Belvedere was not idle. Per- 
sonal affairs required much attention; but they did not pre- 
clude obedience to public duties. 

The readiness with which the voters in this Republic 
turn to those who have won distinction in military action, 
when leaders are required, is certainly remarkable. Soldiers 
of the Revolution, of the War of 18 12, of the Mexican War, 
of the Civil War, and of the Cuban War, have successfully 
been candidates for exalted stations in civil life, and in several 
instances have risen to the very highest posts. Nor does 
this indicate an extravagant admiration of military renown. 
Interference with civil rights or usurpation, in any form, 

1 He was torn at the place settled by his grandfather in the 
" Garrison Forest." Belvedere was built on the property which 
came to him from his mother. — Note by Mr. McHenry Howard, to 
whom the speaker was indebted for much valuable information. 



382 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

would be met with summary resistance, — no matter how 
great a favourite of the people might venture on this for- 
bidden path. But these preferences for heroes are an indi- 
cation that qualities developed in the service of the army, — 
courage, endurance, self-forgetfulness, power to control one's 
self and one's subordinates, obedience to authority and the 
subjection to the public good of all personal considerations, 
— command the confidence and receive the homage of the 
people when these qualities are brought clearly to their 
notice. 

At frequent intervals Colonel Howard was called to the 
discharge of important civil functions. When only thirty- 
six years old he was chosen Governor of Maryland, and at 
forty-two he became a Senator of the United States. The 
duties of both high stations were performed acceptably and 
faithfully. He declined the office of Secretary of War 
urged upon him by Washington. Few of us will hesitate 
to say that the services of Howard rendered to the common- 
wealth in the advancing years of his life, when a wounded 
soldier might have claimed a dignified rest, are as worthy 
of remembrance as those of his military campaigns. Just 
think of them. An honourable descendant of this honourable 
man has placed in my hands a list of the stations to which 
Colonel Howard was called after 1783. It is a remark- 
able list, — one that is seldom equalled in the annals of 
American biography. Let me enumerate the more significant 
places: more than once a justice of the County Court; a 
Justice of the Orphans' Court ; a delegate to the Congress of 
the Confederation; thrice Governor; for five years a State 
Senator; a presidential elector; a major-general of the 
militia of Maryland; president of the Maryland Society of 
the Cincinnati for twenty-three years; for seven years a 
Senator of the United States ; brigadier-general in the United 
States army when a foreign war was expected ; in the War 
of 1 8 12, one of the committee of viligance and defence. 



COLONEL JOHN EAGER HOWARD 383 

When the capitulation of Baltimore was suggested the aged 
hero said that he had four sons in the field and as much 
property at stake as most persons, but would rather see his 
sons slain and his property reduced to ashes than so far dis- 
grace his country. 

Not many manuscripts of Howard are known to me, ex- 
cept such as have been printed. The following letter, ad- 
dressed to Robert Gilmor, from Philadelphia, June 26, 
1788, deserves to be given, particularly because it shows the 
attitude of the writer respecting the adoption of the Federal 
Constitution : 

I congratulate you on the interesting event of the ratification 
of the Federal Government by the State of New Hampshire. It 
now becomes a question with the States that have not adopted the 
Government, whether they will make a part of the union or not. 
In the present situation of affairs this is with them a serious ques- 
tion. Notwithstanding the objections to the Government that it 
will swallow up the state Governments, no person uninfluenced 
by selfish views can think that any State by withdrawing itself 
from the Union will be in a more eligible situation than those in the 
Union. The Government once established they in my opinion will 
soon become petitioners to be admitted, except those under the 
influence of turbulent men who wish to be at the head of a faction, 
or those whose interest it is to be without any Government. If 
Virginia follows the example of New Hampshire, we shall I hope 
secure to this country the blessings of peace and become respectable, 
which I hardly expect without some struggle. 

When rupture with France was imminent at the close 
of the century, he was offered the appointment of brigadier- 
general under Washington, who was expected to command 
once more the United States army. When Baltimore was 
threatened by the British, in 1814, Howard, already more 
that sixty years old, came at once to the front. Thus inter- 
changing the repose of a private citizen with the respon- 
sibilities of a public servant, he passed on to the age of 
seventy-five years and then, after a brief illness, expired. 



384 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

" During the summer his strength had been evidently de- 
clining and his desire for life grew less and less. On the 
3d of October he rode out on horseback and took cold, after 
which he was under the constant care of his physicians and 
of his family until he was released by death," October 
12, 1827. 

The funeral was attended from Belvedere and the pro- 
cession moved, as the papers say, " through the park," Centre 
Street, Calvert Street, and Baltimore Street to the cemetery 
of St. Paul's Church, where a simple monument marks his 
resting place. Next day the Baltimore American contained 
an appreciative account of his life, evidently carefully pre- 
pared by a skilful writer, probably an eminent prelate. 
Some passages of it have been incorporated in almost all 
the notices of Colonel Howard that have since appeared. 

On this occasion, after such a review, what words can 
be so fitting as those of General Nathanael Greene, second 
to Washington in the army of the Revolution, who expressed, 
in a letter which should be treasured as a priceless heir- 
loom, more valuable than a patent of nobility, the sentiment 
— " Howard deserves a statue no less than the Roman and 
Grecian heroes." 

The influence of this memorial will be perennial. If a 
foreign foe should ever again bring alarm to North Point, 
or if civic disorder or domestic anarchy should disturb these 
quiet streets, — the young men of Baltimore, trained in the 
national guard of the commonwealth, and thus accustomed 
to habits of obedience, fortitude and concerted action, will 
be inspired by the remembrance of the hero of Cowpens, and 
will emulate his valour. 

Nor is that the only influence radiating from Monument 
Square. We are not all descended from the heroes of the 
Revolution, nor can all of us bear arms in the defence of 
liberty and law. A large proportion of the inhabitants of 
Baltimore are of foreign birth; the parents of many more 



COLONEL JOHN EAGER HOWARD 385 

passed their childhood in distant lands. It is nobody's fault 
that they did not learn in the nursery to revere the name of 
Washington ; that to them the burning of the Peggy 
Stewart has no significance; that Valley Forge awakens 
no sad memories, and Yorktown no exultation; that they 
know not the bridge where the embattled farmers stood 
who " fired the shot heard round the world " ; and that the 
Cowpens is like a word in an unknown tongue. Shall I 
say it is their misfortune? No, rather say good fortune 
brought them to a land where civil and religious freedom, 
secured by the wisdom of great statesmen and defended by 
brave men, has produced conditions under which every man 
may worship God according to his own conscience, every 
child may receive a public education, may rise according to 
his virtue, industry, and talents, to thrift and contentment, 
and be qualified to take some part, if it be only the humble 
part of a voter, in maintaining the principles of good govern- 
ment. As they look upon the figure of Howard, let them 
be reminded that among his fellow-soldiers in the War of 
Independence were Montgomery, the Irishman; Kosciusko 
and Pulaski, the Poles; DeKalb and Steuben, the Germans; 
Rochambeau and Lafayette, the Frenchmen; and let them 
determine that the government, secured by such men, shall 
receive from their compatriots in the twentieth century the 
defence and support which are due to a priceless inheritance. 
We cannot be too mindful that on education, morality and 
religion, and on conscientious and self-sacrificing devotion 
to the public service, the State depends. 

Still further gain may be expected from the transactions 
of this day. A complete century has passed since the man 
whom we commemorate served his countrymen on the battle- 
field and in the Senate. The entire country has profited 
by the exertions of Howard and his colleagues, and the 
Republic has not been ungrateful. Baltimore is especially 
indebted to him for the gifts which secured to us these 



386 THE LAUNCHING OF A UNIVERSITY 

beautiful squares and the monument which crowns them; 
and more than this, for the public spirit shown in his 
devotion to the city of his lifelong residence, to his native 
State, and to the national government which he helped to 
found. May future generations admire his character and 
emulate his virtues. They constitute " a monument more 
enduring than brass." Gratitude, perpetual gratitude, is due 
from us and from our successors and descendants to those 
wise men among whom our hero served. 

A great orator, closing his tribute to one who was in his 
time the greatest American statesman, remarks that in the 
relations of civilised life, there is no higher service which 
man can render to man than to preserve a wise constitutional 
government in healthful action; and he quotes from that 
" admirable treatise on the Republic of which some previous 
chapters have been restored to us after having been lost for 
ages," a sentence where Cicero " does not hesitate to affirm 
that there is nothing in which human virtue approaches 
nearer the divine than in establishing and preserving states," 
— civitates aut condere novas, aut conservare jam conditas. 

In our day, many clouds hang over the skies. Problems 
of unprecedented perplexity present themselves to the con- 
sideration of thoughtful citizens. The student of history 
sometimes wonders whether popular government will prove 
adequate to the new demands. For one, I believe that it will. 
Already in the most distant of our possessions we have seen 
the introduction of sound political principles and methods, 
and the most ancient of empires bears witness to the concili- 
atory influence of American diplomacy. This benign in- 
fluence will in the long run depend upon the action of the 
people. Let them keep informed of and adhere to the 
principles of the founders of the Republic; let the example 
and services be forever cherished of those who were the 
friends, colleagues, and co-workers with John Eager Howard. 



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